February 2010 Archives

As I was cleaning up some old junk, I found these comic photocopies that I had hanging up in my college dorm room(s). They're probably all from Critters #50 (1990), but I'm too lazy to go double-check that. Either way, Critters #50 was an awesome issue.

Because these comics are so great, I'm going to queue up a bunch of them to auto-publish on Sundays. Enjoy!

The fact that I had this Mark Martin comic on my wall about five years before I went vegetarian shows that I was already leaning in the right direction. This one is a little tough to read in scan form because Martin uses a three-column layout.

Our Oz streak has continued, uninterrupted only by blizzard conditions that kept me stuck at work. We're on book #10 at the moment, but here's a rundown of 5, 6 and 7.

The Road to Oz (1909)

"Road" introduces the Shaggy Man, who is one of Baum's classic Kindly Old Man fixtures who consistently pair off with his young leading ladies on adventures. It rings odd today, for sure. I mean, Shaggy Man is essentially a bum, but because he has the Love Magnet, everybody likes him. Creepy! He meets up with Dorothy, who is brought to Oz for her fourth visit by way of Ozma screwing with her and intentionally getting her and Toto lost.

They also find Button Bright, a young boy (younger than Dorothy although by the time we see him again in Scarecrow of Oz he seems much older and smarter) who is moderately annoying. Luckily, Dorothy's companions this time also include Polychrome the Rainbow's Daughter... who is one of my favorites if only because she is one of the female characters who inspire Baum to literary fits as he tries to explain how mind-meltingly beautiful she is.

By this book (#5), the pattern is clear. Dorothy is somehow warped to Oz and collects and bizarre entourage of followers and she explores an even more bizarre section of the Oz countryside. As per usual, the end goal is the Emerald City where Ozma and her older friends await. This time, Dorothy's arrival coincides with Ozma's birthday celebration, which attracts penitents from all over the land, including books Baum wrote that were not even set in Oz.

One Oz habit that starts to bother me by book five is that Baum very definitely treats the animals as second-class citizens. By Ozma's party, the animals eat at separate tables and have to lodge in separate quarters (IE, stables, not palace rooms). Even the Lion, who should be according one of Oz's greatest heroes for his role in the elimination of the Witch of the West and his status as part of Ozma's personal bodyguard! Although, Baum does note that Billina the Yellow Hen has been allowed to reproduce unfettered, somehow single-handedly populating Oz with millions of chickens. I don't quite understand how this works, but while they do not eat Billina's children and children's children etc... Billina does allow the Ozites to eat all the unfertilized eggs.

The Emerald City of Oz (1910)

This is a great adventure, because it dovetails the usual Dorothy-wanders-through-Oz bit with a parallel story of Ruggedo the Nome King's efforts to conquer the Emerald City.

One important event in this book is that Aunt Em and Uncle Henry are brought to live in Oz, effectively removing Dorothy's need to return to Kansas at the end of each adventure. Baum explains in his preface that this idea was supplied by his fans, which suggests that children everywhere were irritated by Dorothy being constantly forced to abandon a wonderful fairyland to go home to a destitute farm in the middle of nowheresville, America. "There's no place like home," indeed! F that, Oz has a utopian socialist society where she's a friggin' princess and lovingly cared for by an entire underclass of willing servants. Plus all the eggs she can eat, apparently.

The Nome King is a great villain, alternately menacing and comical, but in this tale he outmatches himself when he allies with a trio of truly terrible monster species. In true conniving-villain fashion (this was written in 1910!), each of the four evil factions plans to destroy the others as soon as the Emerald City is overcome.

Once word gets out that such a terrible army is on its way, the Oz people lose hope. Ozma herself refuses to fight, so as to not lower herself or her country to the level of the invaders. However, the Scarecrow and Glinda cook up a plan, based around the deus ex machina of the Forbidden Fountain... a location that has not been mentioned before and likely is never mentioned again.

To avoid any future invasions, it is suggested to render Oz invisible to all outsiders. Dorothy, having secured a home for her American family, says "You may make Oz invis'ble as soon as you please, for all I care." Glinda replies that she already has. Cold as ice, that one.

The final chapter of book #6 is an interesting personal note from Baum himself, where he reveals that since Oz is closed to all communication, there will be no more Oz books. Wikipedia reports that Baum changed his tune once he needed more money.

The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1913)

Luckily, modern technology provided Baum with an out to get around Glinda's shield of invisibility. In this preface, Baum claims to be using a wireless telegraph to talk with Dorothy and learn more new stories about Oz.

"Patchwork Girl" is interesting because we see even more of the authoritarian power wielded by Ozma and her trusted confidants, such as the Tin Woodman. The Patchwork Girl herself - Scraps by nickname - being "new" to Oz is used as commentary on Ozma's absolute power. Chief among Ozma's rules is that no one is allowed to practice magic, except for Glinda and the Wizard (who has backed off from his earlier stance as a fraudulent P.T. Barnum character and is now in training to learn actual magic from Glinda.) Ozma has shut down magic for the common good, that no more magicians can threaten Oz, but it smacks of a tyrant's decision to me.

Baum is plainly bored with sending Dorothy around on another tour, so this time he drafts a munchkin boy named Ojo. Ojo's uncle has been turned to stone, and he needs to collect specific far-flung ingredients to get a local illicit magician to cure him. Ojo then ventures on a typical Oz quest, but Baum does not let him encounter a single familiar Oz friend until one hundred pages in... and then it's only the friggin' Shaggy Man. The Shaggy Man recognizes that Ojo's quest is a valiant one, but he knows that the whole magic bit is not going to sit well with Ozma.

Ojo is frustrated by the laws of Oz, because they stop him from gathering the ingredients. When he picks a six-leaf clover, Ozma has him thrown into jail for breaking her law. When he tells the Tin Woodman that he needs the wing of a yellow butterfly - the latter being the Emperor of the Winkie land where most yellow creatures live - the Tin Man outright refuses on the grounds that the butterfly would be injured. Ojo can't catch a break.

Clark really enjoyed this book because of the lively cast of characters, plus the relatively unusual practice of a boy assuming the lead. Scraps is immediately positioned as the romantic counterpart to the Scarecrow (one of Clark's favorites.) There's a boxy little beast called the Woozy who becomes absurdly angry when he hears the phrase "krizzle-kroo." When the others ask him what it means, the Woozy replies "I don't know! That's what makes me so upset!" Then there's Bungle the Glass Cat, a vain creature illegally brought to life who offers the series' best running gag by constantly referencing his visible pink brains by saying "You can see 'em work."

Rittai Kakushi E Attakoreda (YouTube via Kotaku)
Wow, this is balls-out the coolest thing I think I've ever seen on DS.

Superman's debut comic book sells in NYC for $1M (Yahoo News)
Wow. This is how we know mankind will never invent time travel, because there would be a lot more issues of Action #1 in circulation.

Why Apple Declared War on Titilation (For The Women and Children) (Kotaku)
I can't say I never cringed when I saw some BOOBIES app show up under the Entertainment category right alongside downloadable sudoku. But I don't like the idea that some faceless shadow office gets to decide what is acceptable and what isn't. Age-gate it, Apple.

Classic Videogame Store Displays (Kombo)
A gallery of gaming kiosks, mainly focused on the pre-N64 era. These days, a lot of kiosks just aren't any fun. Target hangs an LCD TV and sits a PS3 on the shelf behind it. Boring!

Comic Book Legends Revealed #249 (Comics Should Be Good)
A great Watchman investigation, whether Captain Metropolis and Hooded Justice were a gay couple.

Add Another Lantern Ring to Your Collection (DC Source)
I'm definitely getting the White Lantern ring as part of Brightest Day... but I kind of want the light-up set as well.

Larfleeze Wants You! (Living Between Wednesdays via Mike Sterling)
Somebody made a Larfleeze plushie. I WANT IT.

Yet More on the Unfolding Future-of-Flash-and-the-Web Saga (Daring Fireball)
More from Gruber on Flash and Apple. Since I installed click2flash at home, I've used Flash only when I want to watch a YouTube video (and to enable a WordPress photo uploader.) Not really missing Flash much.

Clark (who turns 5 next week) and I have been reading Blackest Night together. Not word for word; I summarize it for him. He has plenty of Green Lantern toys, he has seen the movie, we watch Brave and the Bold every week... so he's quite a fan. After reading one of the books, he likes to draw what he remembers as the best scenes. The following scans were entirely from his memory, and I did not suggest any content. The one time I did suggest something (the finale to this week's issue 7), Clark declared it too hard because it involved a lot of white and white crayons are no good for coloring.

This is the first drawing, the one that really caught me by surprise because I told him about this scene weeks before he decided to draw it. It's when Flash (in red) and Green Lantern were escaping the flying Black Lantern rings... and Flash was carrying GL along, running so fast that the rings lost contact and fizzled out.

Here's Black Lantern Wonder Woman about to shake off the black and embrace the violet light of the Star Sapphires. Flash is now in his Blue Lantern togs (note the little blue lightning bolt earpieces!)

Scarecrow, flush with Yellow Lantern powers, runs his light-construct-pitchfork through Black Hand.

Boy, I glossed over this scene and Clark remembered it anyway. In the book, Nekron guts a Guardian and uses his organs to summon the white light Entity. Clark's version is a bit cleaner.

As we were reading, Clark was much impressed with this scene. Sinestro stops Green Lantern from approaching the Entity with a giant construct of himself. We've seen Sinestro in multiple media forms, so he's one of the characters that Clark knows pretty well... the concept of a bad guy who used to be a good guy is black-and-white enough that Clark totally gets it.

Nintendo Power #252 has the final tally of the 2009 awards ballot. As expected, they awarded two winners for each category, one from the editorial staff and one from the popular vote. I predicted winners from both camps back at the beginning of the year, as well as revealing my own votes. Let's see how I did.

The big surprise is that the voting public picked Kingdom Hearts DS to win Overall Game of the Year, and by a gigantic margin. That smacks of an internet flash mob. NP of course went with New Super Mario Bros Wii. I personally went with Rhythm Heaven because, honestly, it was a sucky year. Most of the games I would have supported were not even allowed on the nominations.

So my Predictodex starts off at +1 Editorial, -1 Voters.

Wii GOTY was New Super on both camps (the Kingdom Hearts troupe couldn't crash this one!) An easy call.

+2 Editorial, 0 Voters.

In my blurb on DS GOTY, I said "I think even diehard Kingdom Hearts fans have to face up that 358/2 Days is dull as dishwater, with awful controls." Ha! They sure showed me. Quite frankly, I don't know how they had the time to storm the voting site, since the game takes so damn long to play. Oh wait, I know, they probably voted while they were stuck on one of the millions of interminable waiting scenes while between missions.

NP picked Spirit Tracks; the voters went with Kingdom Hearts. I had this one all wrong. +1 Editorial, -1 Voters.

As far WiiWare GOTY, NP went with the one that had been out for about twenty minutes, Castlevania ReBirth. The voters went with Final Fantasy IV, which is probably a sidequest for the Kingdom Hearts voters. Again, I missed on both predictions. 0 Editorial, -2 Voters.

DSiWare GOTY was an easy call, since Minis March Again was just about the only game available for DSiWare. Finally, some points to me: +1 Editorial, -1 Voters.

NP picked Muramasa for Best Wii Graphics; the voters went with Crystal Bearers (again, notice an RPG slant to the voting picks? Hmmmmm.) I got the editorial pick correct. +2 Editorial, -2 Voters.

For Best DS Graphics, NP chose Kingdom Hearts and the Kingdom Hearts Online Voting Bloc chose Kingdom Hearts. Again, I got it wrong. +1 Editorial, -3 Voters.

Best Original Score went to Suikoden: Tierkreis on the editorial side and Spirit Tracks from the public. I got one of those correct. 0 Editorial, -2 Voters.

I seriously muffed the Best Sound/Voice Acting category because I had yet to play Silent Hill: Shattered Memories at the time that I voted. NP picked Silent Hill and the voters went Kingdom Hearts. -1 Editorial, -3 Voters.

Best Music/Rhythm Game... NP chose Rhythm Heaven, voters took Beatles Rock Band. -2 Editorial, -2 Voters for me. Man, I am sucking this up big time.

NP picked Spirit Tracks for Best Adventure Game, while the voters stuck with Kingdom Hearts. Still blinded by Zelda, I lost another voter point here. -1 Editorial, -3 Voters.

Hey, so why again was Kingdom Hearts not even nominated for Best RPG? Weird. NP and the voters, in rare agreement, chose Bowser's Inside Story. I got the voter vote right but the ed vote wrong. -2 Editorial, -2 Voters.

Best Strategy Game went weird: NP had my pick, Little King's Story, but the voters backed Fire Emblem. -1 Editorial, -3 Voters.

Best Shooter. Dead Space Extraction for the editors; Call of Duty Modern Warfare Reflex for the public. I said "I just don't think enough people that give a crap about Call of Duty give those craps on the Wii" and was plenty wrong about it. I was right that NP would be insufferable about the Dead Space win. 0 Editorial, -4 Voters.

What was I thinking when I figured everybody (but me) would pick Punch-Out for Best Sports Game? Both camps went with Resort. Punch-Out is, once again, dead. -1 Editorial, -5 Voters.

NP picked Madworld as Best Action Game. The voters hilariously went with Sonic and the Black Knight, a game I forget even existed until just now. More minus signs for me. -2 Editorial, -6 Voters.

Boy, Best Platformer was a useless category this year. NSMBW won on both halves, as I predicted. -1 Editorial, -5 Voters. I'm the comeback kid, I can feel it!

NP picked Might & Fucking Magic for Best Puzzle Game? Against both Layton (my pick) and Scribblenauts (voter pick)? -2 Editorial, -4 Voters.

I got NP's choice for Best New Character correct, which was random (whatserface from Monkey Island.) The voters went with not-Kairi from Kingdom Hearts. -1 Editorial, -5 Voters.

At least I can trust with New Super Mario Bros Wii to unite everyone in categories where Kingdom Hearts DS is not involved. Best Multiplayer goes to Mario, as I predicted. 0 Editorial, -4 Voters.

The Best Story/Writing category again felt the sting of me not yet playing Silent Hill (is that on sale yet? You should totally go pick that up.) NP went with Silent Hill, while the internet nerds against stuck with Kingdom Hearts. I figured Bowser would sweep and was incorrect.

So my final index is -1 Editorial and -5 Voters. Which is terrible. Maybe I'll post some analysis later, but this entry is getting long. Weird year.

No matter what I say I'm getting, there's always surprises and impulse buys that add more to my collection.

For example, Clark and I quite liked the demo of Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing, which is out this week. I'm a little worried about track variety, since the tracks are based on only four or five gameworlds and they could, you know, be based on ten gameworlds. Also, the PS3 version does not get any exclusive characters, while both Wii and 360 do. #signsofthesonypocalypse.

Still, a trophy-enabled high-def version of Mario Kart would be no bad thing. The big monkey in the wrench is that sometime, someday, ModNation Racers will come out, and I'm not sure I need two trophy-enabled high-def versions of Mario Kart.

Then there's Darksiders. Which is simplistically stupid, dreamed up by the same sort of infants who made God of War. It's the kind of thing that Strong Bad would make fun of... all heavy metal, faux-deep thinking and sharp spiky character designs. I'm safely outside the demographic on this.

But here's why I bought it: because if you buy Darksiders before March, you get Red Faction: Guerrilla for free. +$5 S&H. And by all accounts that one is an overlooked gem from last fall, with people that I didn't even know played that kind of game coming out with big props for it.

This weekend, Target had Darksiders on sale for $50. So that's now two 7 or 8-rated games for $55. Not bad at all.

I'm rough on Darksiders for the embarrassing high school dropout imagery it brings to the table, but the game itself seems solid. That, at least, is the legacy of God of War. The setting and characters may be trite and uncreative, but we can expect good gameplay. It's worth $25, sure. There are plenty of times when all you need is a brutish, mindless brawler, and Darksiders has enough Legend of Zelda adventure elements that it will keep me invested in it.

As I was cleaning up some old junk, I found these comic photocopies that I had hanging up in my college dorm room(s). They're probably all from Critters #50 (1990), but I'm too lazy to go double-check that. Either way, Critters #50 was an awesome issue.

Because these comics are so great, I'm going to queue up a bunch of them to auto-publish on Sundays. Enjoy!

Here's a classic Sam & Max one-pager by Steve Purcell.

The Man Your Man Could Smell Like (YouTube)
Here it is: your fourhman.com jump-the-shark moment. I'm embedding a funny commercial.

How To Unlock The Resident Evil 5 DLC "Classic" Camera (Kotaku)
Ha! Love it. Although, as with Assassin's Creed II, I'm sorta waiting for the various DLC releases to be bundled under a slight discount before I buy anything.

Roger Ebert: The Essential Man (Esquire via Daring Fireball)
I have to say, I'm ashamed that I had no idea Roger Ebert lost his jaw to cancer. I know I've read stuff he has written within the past few years with no inkling that his life has been turned upside down. I guess that's how he wants it.

3D Dot Game Heroes Preview: Don't Judge a Game by its Pixels (Aeropause)
I get the feeling this is a game to watch, but I'm just not sure I'm in the target audience.

NYTF 2010: Mattel - Batman the Brave and the Bold (Collection DX)
Why are half the toys in this Toy Fair gallery items that I've seen at Target for months? I bet Clark will want the zombie-mobster version of Solomon Grundy. Interesting that there's going to be another stab at DC-themed building block toys... the trouble is that these third-rate attempts never measure up to the LEGO sets.

Extremely Fat Man Who Made Millions Off Star Wars References Not Given Preferential Treatment Over All Other Extremely Fat Men (Something Awful)
I'd like to think Kevin Smith found this funny, but maybe not.

The Lord of the Rings: The Motion Picture Trilogy (Theatrical Editions) [Blu-ray] (Amazon)
Aweso... wait, the theatrical trilogy? For $100? I think I can hold out for the Extended Edition blu-ray, and hold out further for a reasonable price on that. New blu-ray movies already go for cheaper than $30, so bundling three for $100 is no deal. It's back to upsampling for me on this one.

As seen on GameSetWatch, a faux Disney Villains fighting game screen imagined by a DeviantArt account (nice job, violatekate!)

As much as I like the anime style, I'd also wish for a true-to-original graphics option. These days, the anime look when applied to non-anime source material is sort of like when I was a kid and they drew Bugs Bunny in a basketball pinny and baggy pants. Although I like anime, so it doesn't bother me.

Still, Cruella's special move bringing in her flaming limo? Mad Madam Mim turning her opponent into an awkward little bird? Bring on Capcom vs. Disney.

Someday they're going to get smart and make a modular, DLC-supported Capcom vs, where you can create your character select screen out of hundreds and hundreds of separately purchaseable characters. Start with the available Marvel, Darkstalkers, Tatsunoko, Street Fighter troupes and add in dozens of licenses and hot properties.

Disney, Nintendo, DC, Pokemon, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Final Fantasy, etc.

The problem is that Capcom's fighting franchises are tailored for the tourney nerds and they would freak out over the game being constantly evolving and individually customizable. Instead of, you know, valuing fun.

As I wind up No More Heroes 2, I'm starting to plan out what happens next. I already have Pokemon SoulSilver on pre-order, so that's cool.

I had nothing for Heavy Rain (PS3, February) until I played the demo... now I'm interested. Not likely a day one purchase, unless somebody has a deal going. But the idea of a branching, complicated, user-driven movie is very compelling.

Sam and Max Season Two is, surprise, headed to Wii in March (or never, this release date has been floating around for a while.) I never finished the first one. I need to sit down with a walkthrough and just enjoy it. What has been happening is that I keep overlooking one tiny little stupid puzzle and that kills the entire process. Then something that should be funny and fast-paced ends up becoming frustrating and boring. I can wait on Season Two.

Calling (Wii, March) seems like it would be right up my flagpole. Japanese horror, awesome logo. Interested.

Speaking of Japanese-themed games, I've still got a watchful eye on Fragile Dreams (Wii, March)... it's apparently flaky but with a beautiful haikyo theme.

Pokemon SoulSilver hits DS in mid-March. That pedometer thing is going to own me.

Just Cause 2 (PS3, March) has two plusses that keep shoving it through my filter. One, it's got some kind of crazy PS3-exclusive upload-to-YouTube feature. Two, Mike liked the first one and I never played it. Or even saw him play it.

WarioWare DIY comes to Wii and DS at the end of March. I'll be there for that, for sure. I'm hoping that the setup makes it easy for Wii friends who do not own a DS to play and enjoy all the hundreds of microgames I plan on making. Also, I hope that the hundreds of microgames I plan on making end up being good.

I'm crossing my Silver Shoes that Zombie Panic in Wonderland (WiiWare, March) ends up with a smart Oz theme, because Clark and I would dig that. I don't mean the game has to get so Ozzy-fan-serviced as to contain the Patchwork Girl or Cap'n Bill... but it would be great to see some book-derived characters outside of the usual MGM suspects.

Yes, I'll be getting GTA: Episodes from Liberty City (PS3, March). Blu-ray version.

Hey really? Is EyePet actually going to come out for PS3 in March? No way. They're pushing this back as part of the Motion Controller launch, come on.

Yakuza 3 also shows up on PS3 in March. I can see me enjoying that, but there seems to be an abundance of similar games already on deck.

Might like to get back into the world of anime surgery with Trauma Team (Wii, April). I always thought the DS version played better than the tools-floating-in-mid-air Wii version, but there's enough interesting gimmickry in this new edition that might woo me in.

Absolutely I'm in for Red Dead Redemption (PS3, April). It's about friggin' time. This is perhaps the title on this list that I am most excited about. Although I'm not exactly keen on it showing up so soon after Just Cause 2, Yakuza 3 and GTA Episodes.

Seems to be how it goes. A bunch of great PS3 games come out, and I'm there. A bunch of great Wii games come out, and now I'm over there. I'm on No More Heroes 2 at the moment, which came right after the twin late night horrors of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories and Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse. (Simultaneously, I'm rather accomplished in Animal Crossing, again, being very close to paying off my second floor.)

No More Heroes 2 is, unfortunately, not as good as the original. It has nothing to do with the characters or the look or the script. It has everything to do with a pile of totally bullshit bosses and a couple sections with seriously unpleasant controls.

If you love gimmicky bosses, go get NMH2. It seems like every one has some silly critical hit zone or secret weak moment that you need to master to get through. Tonight I got through Vladimir (#3 on the rankings; I'm pretty far in) and he starts off rather easy and dull... but then unloads an instant-death attack when he gets down to his final health. So what happens is you spend fifteen minutes slowly whittling this guy down, and then he kills you out of nowhere.

My tip to you for just about all the bosses is to master the dodge move.

The controls thing is more problematic, since the bosses can more or less be chalked up to hard. There's a Shinobu section and a (very brief) Schpeltiger section. Shinobu gets a jump move than Travis lacks, but it is criminally inexact. Of course, large portions of her levels require hyper-accurate jumping. Which means lots of falling.

The Schpeltiger bit is a prelude to an absolutely killer boss fight, where you're expected to use your bike to ram the boss's bike off a cliff. Except that the 'tiger controls like no video game vehicle you've ever used video game controls to control in a video game before. The fundamentals of gas / brake / nitro are there, but they are obscured in a magnetic, molassey mess. You're just going to have to fluke your way through this part on the enemy bike's initial joust and move on.

What #2 gets right is what the #1 got right. Combat is fun, motion controls are non-obnoxious, and the setting is darkly brilliant. It's just weird that NMH2 would try to fix things that were not broken and then cock it all up (the 8-bit mini-games outright suck). If you've never tried either game, definitely do not assume that because the sequel is newer that it is somehow better. Go get the first one. It is an Important Wii Game, and as far as M-rated Wii games go, it is waaaaay better than Madworld.

I'm still a huge fan of the franchise and will absolutely pick up the PS3 remake whenever it comes out. Not sure how they're going to map Travis's masturbation motion recharge to the Dual Shock, but I'm guessing it involves a shoulder button.

Overall, it has been a great Wii jag, NMH2 disappointments notwithstanding. Fatal Frame was excellent, Silent Hill an extremely impressive surprise, and my rebirth in Animal Crossing better than expected. Tomena Sanner, a $5 WiiWare oddity, is a worthwhile diversion, and Clark and I are still picking our way through Pokemon Rumble (holy crap, there's a second quest). Muscle March sucks, but it has resulted in Clark running through the house doing muscle poses and slamming into walls, which is hilarious. The dimmest light belongs to Super Monkey Ball: Step & Roll, which we have not played much but I can already tell is relying on motion controls and the Balance Board to its detriment.

As I was cleaning up some old junk, I found these comic photocopies that I had hanging up in my college dorm room(s). They're probably all from Critters #50 (1990), but I'm too lazy to go double-check that. Either way, Critters #50 was an awesome issue.

Because these comics are so great, I'm going to queue up a bunch of them to auto-publish on Sundays. Enjoy!

Here's a story by Doug Gray, who did a B&W series called "Eye of Mongombo" that I quite liked. In celebration of Valentine's Day, this Sunday Scan has a love theme.

Here's more old boxes I finally threw away (recycled!), because I know you love this kind of thing.

My freshman year slideshow project. It was, predictably, about comics. I kept the slides but dumped the carrels.

A box of Marvel Super Heroes cookies! I have to confess that at one time I had kept one cookie of each character (list on the side), but somewhere along the line I threw those away.

I like the random artist clip art jam. Looks like some Sal Buscema, maybe Jack Kirby on Sue. Is that a Bill Sienkiewicz Wolverine?

Some toy boxes. These boxes were way too big for the silly cars they contained. Clark is enjoying the cars; the recycler is enjoying the boxes.

My longest-served phone. Great device. Just unfortunately abandoned and then seriously outclassed.

Our first Shuffle! This was the original "stick of gum" model. I always thought the green box color was an odd choice.

And here's the original gun barrel iSight. Swiftly miniaturized and outmoded.

Still more to go. The snowstorm delayed progress on our basement remodel, so I have not bothered to dig further into my stash. One of the next items to tackle is my boxes of loose action figures. Some of the junkier toys have made it to a yard sale box, but there are plenty that I want to put back in their boxes for posterity (mainly some Marvel collector-friendly sets of the X-Men and the Avengers, if we can locate everybody.)

Really Rosie - One Was Johnny (YouTube)
Does anybody else remember "Really Rosie" segments being on before school, like, all the time?

Why (and How) Apple Killed the $9.99 Ebook (Gizmodo)
Count me among those who think that $14.99 is way too much for a goddamn digital book. Also $9.99.

Coloring the Kingdom (Vanity Fair)
All about Walt's ink-and-paint "girls" who toiled over Snow White and Mickey Mouse without much credit.

Game reviewers are snobs (Steve Streeting)
Whoop! Somebody else thinks LEGO Rock Band is way better than Beatles Rock Band.

Sarah Palin's Storm at the Tea Party (Slate)
I was really hoping no one would ever have to talk about this woman again, but we're veering dangerously close to officially turning our government into partisan talk radio.

Genie Effect Should be Renamed Ghost Trap Effect (Gizmodo)
I lawled.

Fifteen years ago, Mike, Chris and I took a road trip for no real reason, from PA to NY to Canada to Connecticut. By the time we got to CT, we could no longer switch seats in the car to swap drivers around, because we had our personal stink was so deeply embedded in our respective cushions.

That's sort of what I feel like now, after three straight days of work to hotel to work to hotel to work. With only the barest change in clothes.

In preparation for the work-based snow-in, I grabbed a bag of afghan blankets... and to my surprise it contained some knitted slippers my grandmother made. So I got to enjoy those in the hotel room, as seen above.

Seeing as I have spent the last two days going through viewer-submitted photos of Life In Snowtime, I'm not going to weblog a bunch of my own pictures of snow-on-deck, dogs-in-snow, or bikini-in-snow (yes, that's a thing). ...ok, here's one of my car, which has been stuck in a bowling alley parking lot since Tuesday.

Luckily, Rhonda and Clark have been safe at home for the duration. They did the thing where you use snow to make edible ice cream.

My comrades-in-office-arms, Josh and Anna, made the best of the late hotel nights by playing Chrononauts, Yetisburg, Catan, Monty Python Fluxx and TaleSpin.

In fact, as my employer marched through continuous snow coverage, they brought me on set to talk about a couple of these card games. I'll be embedding that few minutes of television gold as soon as I can get my hands on it.

Have I mentioned that I have a genuine Mona Lisa? Or "Famous Painting," whatever?

Colin sent that to me. Colin also sent Clark this King Tut mask...

Which, which caught in a pitfall, sort of looks like the Boy King is rising out of the ground. Clark got a kick out of that. Zombie humor, ar ar.

Had another Tony visit. late Saturday night. We both made crazy amounts of money selling our crappy native fruit in each other's town.

Awkward conversations abounded.

We were actually supposed to spend Saturday at Josh's real-life animal house, but the snowstorm forbade. Mother Nature hates Game Nights.

Knowing the blizzard was coming, on Friday Tony put out a half-hearted push for Josh to quick buy Animal Crossing. Josh put out a full-hearted rejection.

I don't think this is the best way to go about convincing Josh to get the game.

Really? That's all? You couldn't hold that slight alteration for some future, functionality-based update? That is abusing the privilege, sir.

I wish somebody had thought to make these photos export to the SD card. How can game devs ignore something so blindingly obvious. The Wii is stuck in such a terrible position: the vast majority of Wii owners has no idea what it can do, and the vast majority of Wii game makers never bother to leverage all it could do. So in the great arms race between the Wii and the PS3 and the 360, the Wii comes off even worse. The Wii has a dead-simple mechanism for sending photos to friends (even if the method for identifying friends is embarrassingly flawed), and yet very few games utilize it.

I love this shot of an angry Ayako. As Rougetsu Hall's resident problem child, her backstory is one of the best-remembered moments of the game for me.

Typical vanishing ghost stunt. You turn a corner, the game goes batshit on you with the warning that there's a ghost nearby, you wheel around and jump out of your skin when you see Ayako peeking around the doorframe.

A much better shot of that lurching lady ghost.

Aw, it's Madoka. I miss her.

Extreme close-up of Watashi, Kageri's life-size mannequin meant to represent her dead sister. Of course, everybody's dead now, and post-Day Without Suffering, Watashi can walk around on her own.

Incidentally, here's an interview with the team who created the patch that makes Fatal Frame 4 playable on non-Japanese Wiis.

No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle Bizarre Jelly 5 (YouTube)
Straight from No More Heroes 2, here's the opening to anime parody Bizarre Jelly 5! I uploaded my own version of this, but this video is much better.

WarioWare D.I.Y. Has Made Me A User Generated Content Convert (Kotaku)
This is my next big thing, I can feel it.

Wrap it up (Brainy Gamer)
"Gears of War is pitched at the 15-year-old who thinks he's playing an adult game; No More Heroes targets the adult who's got a hormone-addled 15-year-old lurking inside, farting at a funeral." Brilliant!

Sesame Street's "I Am Chicken!" (Suicide Food)
Ew, man. That is really, really weird. You'd think this is the kind of thing Sesame Street wouldn't bother with.

Artist photoshops superheroes into historical scenes (Asylum)
Batman and Castro!

Berkeley Breathed Interview (Vice Magazine)
Great interview. It's sort of shocking that I lived through a time when newspaper comics contained genuine superstars. Now, thanks to the death of newspapers and the reluctant move online, the art of the comic strip is all but dead.

TF: The Illuminati (slacktivist)
Interesting thoughts about a guy who manufactured a satanic conspiracy that was absurd and incohrent on the face of it... and the religious followers who were eager to believe it.

We're building a room in our basement. We're not, but it's happening anyway. When it's done, the "den"-type room that holds the iMac, college couch, and my very best books and games will all go into this new "den"-type basement room with the rest of my books and games. The not-as-good ones.

Then we get two kids' rooms upstairs. One for each.

Unfortunately, in order to get somebody besides yourself to build a room, you have to first clean out the area. So this weekend we emptied 80% of the basement (one wing will remain unfinished), and I found some great old technology boxes that I finally sent off to recyclers and dumpsters unknown.

Man, what a lot of box for a mouse! Sure, the Apple // mouse was built like a brake pedal, but it didn't need that much foam and cardboard.

There's a 100% compatible Apple Disk Drive. Note the sale price: $140.

Ah, my first modem.

To answer your question: yes, I threw away the boxes. No, I didn't throw away the object. Maybe in another twenty years I'll feel confident enough to dump the 300 baud Hayes.

I did eliminate one monitor this week, the one that came with my college-era Performa 430. For whatever reason, I still kept the entire Apple // setup, including this AppleColor monitor.

Original Apple-branded styrofoam! And I threw it away!

I don't what to hear any comments about how much this was all worth. It was taking up space in my life, and freeing that up is worth more than waiting for theoretical eBay money.

At least, that's what Hoarders keeps telling me.

Let's jump ahead a few years to the beloved T-Mobile Sidekick. The world's first Awesome Phone.

I'm pouring a beverage on the floor in its memory.

There's our first iPod, a 10gig click wheeler. Here's my 2002 weblog entry where I first mentioned it, which is a pretty funny article because it makes fun of Matt and suggests that I bought an iPod mainly to entertain Mike.

I'm actually kind of annoyed that the iPod box didn't last ten years.

Here's some boxes that I maybe didn't trash. I kept the Wii and the PS3 boxes. That blue iMac box actually still has a blue iMac in it. But the Rock Band box is gone, and I think the Apple //c box is gone as well.

A lot of empty boxes have left my life. Probably a few more still to go. I noticed that a lot of my old toys and books and junk are packed inside boxes that are only half full. And poorly organized, to boot. I bet this project can keep me plenty occupied until the basement room is finished.

Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse is just as good as the three previous PS2 games in the series. I know that when word got out that Nintendo was not going to release this game in US/UK/AUS territories - and indeed, not allow Tecmo to publish it on their own - the game had to endure some well-intentioned guff that the game must suck. Like, it wasn't up to Nintendo's standards. Bad controls were mentioned. A glitchy Ghost List was brought up.

Aside from the non-intuitive flashlight (the Remote only points the light up and down; you must use the analog stick for right-left), I saw no control issues. As for the Ghost List, I'm sure that could have been fixed as the game went into final prep for worldwide release. I'd love to know the real reason Nintendo squashed it. It must be money related. Given that Nintendo has put out quite a lot of warmed-over rehashes for the Wii, from Animal Crossing to New Super Mario Bros Wii to the New Play Control series, I don't think they're overly concerned about a first-party game looking and feeling last-gen. (Which, although the graphics in FF4 are very nice overall, the menus and inky textures are very PS2.)

Nintendo gave us the no-frills, unloved Endless Ocean for $30, a month before Smash Bros came out. I think they could have floated a slightly creaky and brilliantly creepy horror game. Especially one with such a unique hook... I mean, this isn't just some kind of lame Resident Evil pretender. This isn't like how nobody bought The Conduit because the kind of people who would have liked The Conduit are pretty much only buying those types of games on the 360/PS3. No one would accuse Fatal Frame on Wii of being the lesser RE.

To the point about horror content, I found FF4 less disturbing that the previous games. Across the three PS2 titles, we've had the Blinding Mask, twins strangling each other, people staked to the ground... and lots of ghosts of dead children. None of this is explicitly gory. In the Hitchcock tradition, these sorts of things are mostly handled offscreen. Or with aftermath hints (like Sae's bloody kimono in FF2) rather than direct displays of violence. Which, of course, is why Fatal Frame is such effective horror.

Fatal Frame 4, while it trades in the same themes and setup as the ancestor games, opts for mental delirium and psychic hoodoo rather than overt violence.

Although I find it difficult to rank my four precious Fatal Frame games, I think I'd place #4 above #3, on par with #1 (for story, not for gameplay... #1 had some design flaws that were fixed for successive games). But not as good as #2. I don't imagine any game could best Crimson Butterfly.

Speaking of ranking, here's mine (some end-of-game spoilers follow, but nothing pertaining to the story):

D! Man, I hate that. I nailed over half of the Ghost List (most of the remainder you can't get on the first playthrough anyway) and 51 out of 79 hozuki dolls! And because I love the game so damn much, I took my time and enjoyed 13 hours 22 minutes of it... which I assume punishes my score because I took too long. Oh well, at least the rank means nothing, unlockiwise.

Funny story about the hozuki. They're little dolls hidden throughout the game, and you have to take pictures of them as an optional collectible series. At first you just have to spot them Where's Waldo-style, but eventually you receive a camera upgrade that makes chime noises when you are near one.

As I was entering the game's finale, I was at 49 dolls. I tramped through the last part hoping against hope that I would find doll #50. Because 50 sounds like a great number, right? How crappy would it have been to make it through the entire game and only miss one solitary doll?

Finally I found my fiftieth doll. I was sure that was the last one and I was proud for having caught them all. Then I entered the big boss confrontation and found another doll! 51?!? Uh-oh. After the credits rolled I saw the screen that revealed 79 total dolls. 79?!?!? What kind of stupid number is 79? Maybe that's what Nintendo hated.

Here's the crazy list of items unlocked after my first playthrough:

All of that stuff (except for Mission Mode and Hard Mode) has to be purchased with in-game points. I found one of my unlocked costumes particularly appealing...

That one will make this the best ever version of Luigi's Mansion.

It goes without saying that I am incredibly happy to have played this game. Worth every penny to import. I'm positively thankful for it, especially knowing that it rides on the backs of a group of devoted fans who churned some serious alchemy to make it happen. I'm still boggled by what they did.

Given my penchant for pessimism, the corporate support failure of Fatal Frame 4 makes me think the franchise is over. On the other hand, who would have predicted we'd get four games in this series in the first place.