X-Factor Visionaries - Meeeeemories.....

Well, I had a twenty dollar bill burning a hole in my pocket and so I caved in and told my local comic book shop (yes I support them over Borders when I can ^^) to (please) order me X-Factor Visionaries Volume 4. (Peter David) I've been waffling over it since I heard that it had been released a few weeks back so I finally made the plunge. I have some wonderful nostalgia about that time of X-Factor - Polaris was more sane(ish), Rahne had a painful crush on Havok, and Guido's jokes were funny. They all went to the shrink (which has been recently revisited) and fought together in one of the (many many many) crossovers of the early 90s. It was good times for the most part.

I won't be wishy washy about my opinion of Peter David's current work. It's really dark and while it fits (current) X-Factor from time to time, it really, really doesn't work in She Hulk. Even though they explained why she's so damn cranky these days, it was still hard to muster sympathy for her. Especially when the person who was in the right at the time was Mallory friggin Book. /groan.

I don't think PAD has gone the way of Claremont - i.e. from amazingly wonderful to WTF Mate. It's a sad day when I read Genext and think 'It wasn't awful! Hooray!' Claremont is another heartbreaking tangent that I won't make you suffer through right now. Maybe later - HaHAH.

At any rate, this trade paperback will be in my subscription box next week and I'll be sure to let you know if my nostalgia for this storyline stands the test of time.

Link Drop - Digsby is swank Edition

Hello hello, I just installed Digsby, which is something along the lines of a program that's like Twhirl and Trillian had a baby. An awesome, awesome baby. I have to say, it's made a great first impression with me. (that's not to say that it won't foul up horribly, but for now, all good!)

Before I get into comics news and the rest of my post, I'd like to respond to comments in the previous post. It's true I love the Dodson's art and I do indeed think that their cover for Uncanny 500 is still utterly swank, (and I still want it look at their expressions! All dead on! Yay @ bitch face Emma. Hah!), I do want to point out that I had an equivalent fangirl squee over Uncanny 498. I believed I deemed it "For the ladies" and showed it to all the girls at the local anime meeting.

Also, please continue to comment. I love it <3

comics:

Newsarama has a great article from HeroesCon about X-Men : Manifest Destiny
Manifest Destiny being that the X-Men permanently move to California. This kind of bums me out as technically I live on the East Coast (or the south, whatever Florida may be) and seriously, we know that California is better at everything. This also kills my 'If it didn't happen in Westchester, I don't care' catch phrase.

Sort of related: WHY OH WHY is the porn tracer Greg Land going to be working on these books? To quote a commenter:

korvac1969 wrote: Ah Greg Land, gotta love an artist who's medium is a light box and a huge stack of porn mags.

Quoted for Truth, as they say on the intertrons.

ComicVine has jumped on the redesign bandwagon that CBR and Newsarama have started rolling. I must say, all of the redesigns look great so far.

I Love Japan:

Woman lives like a hamster for a week in what was apparently an 'art' installation. ?_?
source: BruceCat's Plurk Feed

Sad news: Sailor Moon Musical Actress Dies at 24
source: Anime News Network

Japanese WiiWare allows users to read comics on their Wii. Americans die of jealousy.
source: Wii Fanboy

Gaming

The Rza will beat your ass...at chess.
source: Kotaku

Creepy Silent Hill cosplay
Not enough money on the planet that would make me brave/stupid enough to be the girl on top that's spread eagle.
source: Destrutoid

Misc WTF?

Panties cause injury - woman sues!
via BoingBoing

Quick Link Drop - I Have Insomnia Edition

Ooh, I found a random Miyamoto Mii! Yay!
source: google images and Hatena Fotolife

Uncanny X-Men 500 will have two variant covers and while the Turner cover is very nice, the Dodson cover is SWANK AS ALL HELL. I hope it's not ridiculous expensive, but, it probably will be. ;_;
source: Marvel News


Touch butts in the ToLoveRu game (and you wonder why I skipped this anime entirely)
source: Kotaku

Topless Robot found 50 ladies that coplayed Wonder Woman. Nice!

Otaku dies under a pile of manga
source: Japanator, who got it from Canned Dogs

Futurama movie drops on Tuesday the 24th? WHAT! I need to get to Blockbuster!
source: a commercial on Adult Swim

Witchblade Manga Up for an Award?

Kindly file under WTF and also, Do Not Want.

ANN reports that the Witchblade manga has been nominated for a Harvey Award.
Uh...what?
This is one of the worst manga I have ever read.

I'm fairly desensitized to negative portrayals of women in comics and manga but this one was SO bad that I couldn't overlook it. Oversexualized is an understatement. In addition to all the typical kink stereotype characters (lolita, schoolgirl, librarian, glasses girl - combine as needed) Panty shots abound (and these girls are PACKING. Jeez!) There's a point where it looks as though Takeru (current bearer in the manga) is taking the Witchblade out of her vajayjay. I never thought I'd witness anything that made Agent Aika look tame.

The story was weak, the main character was fairly useless when not in Witchblade form and the ending was incredibly abrupt. Really awful overall. Before you ask, yes I gave it a chance. I read the entire thing. The story gives you this feeling like it's surely going to go somewhere, anywhere, soon, and yet it never does. (I've verified this feeling with others that have read it)

I hope this doesn't win a dang thing - and don't bother reading it yourself either, unless you just want it for the ecchi art.

Samurai Showdown on VC

Initially, this made me happy, but for some reason the extra dollar's worth of points kind of annoys me. It's 900 points, as opposed to 800, which World Heroes went for. (KOF 94 is also up on the VC for 900 points.) Now this would be fine if those titles (and 14 others!) weren't available on SNK Arcade Classics Vol 1 for 20 bucks! So I could buy 2 on the VC, or 16 on the disk....

I won't lie, I want to download it something fierce, but I think I am going to redouble my efforts to find SNK Arcade Classics instead. *sigh* I asked my local EB Games about the game the day it got released but apparently they got TWO copies and someone came in and grabbed them both. Oh, and you can't preorder games like this, I've tried. If it's 2D, (and not on the DS) don't even bother asking. ;_;

I know I posted the list of games on this disk before, but here it is once more.

Art of Fighting, Baseball Stars 2, Burning Fight, Fatal Fury, KOF94, King of the Monsters, Last Resort, Magician Lord, Metal Slug, Neo Turf Masters, Samurai Shodown, Sengoku, Shock Troopers, Super Sidekicks3, Top Hunter, World Heroes.

VC Review's..uh...review of Samurai Showdown VC version here.

Link Drop - Firefox Download Day edition

Hello hello all. We all doing our geek duty and downloading Firefox 3? I don't know why I joined the bandwagon, perhaps my loathing of IE and Safari. /shrug.

Anyway, enjoy some links on your new browser (or your old one, you technophobe! XP)

comics:

DevilDoll found a wonderful visualization of D&D character classes, as displayed by super heroes.
source(s): Devil Doll & MightyGodKing

Diamond has dropped their May 08 Sales Charts and Market Reports - Marvel gives DC an ugly beat down. Eeeesh. I suppose this is what DC gets for seemingly going out of their way to not give new readers anywhere to jump on. (no recaps!) source: Newsarama

Not Blog X has a recap of (one of the) Rogue mini series from the 90s. He wasn't fond of this series, but trust me, there were worse.
(aside: this is a really cool blog that I'd like to really dig into. Must add to reader!)

games:
AnimeAlmanac found this link of the Portal song 'Still Alive'... in Japanese.
sources: Anime Almanac's Twitter feed & XBox 360 Fanboy

Found in a GaiaOnline thread: For those that don't know what SNK Boss Syndrome is, consider yourself informed.

anime:
Anime News Network reports that PiQ (the magazine that was supposed to replace Newtype) is already dead at issue 4. That took no time at all.

Summer anime season is started and I'm still watching stuff from 2 seasons back. With any luck, I'll finish up Potemayo pretty soon and pick up some of the summer goodness. Hell, I've only seen the first two episodes of 'last' season's Kamen no Maid Guy.

games:

Kotaku found an amazing and hysterical Flash game called Puzzle Farter. Yes, it's flatulence powered travel. Awesome.

DS Fanboy found a clever little alarm clock based on the Metal Gear Solid character, Otacon.

random amusement:

The Twitter Fail Whale has a groupie. That is good times. Follow her @failwhale.

Link Dump - School Ate My Soul Edition

Due to the aforementioned Soul Eating (not the anime :P) here are some links from a few days back.

Twitter hits Japan. Japan hits back. I suspect this may have added to the increased viewings of the 'fail whale' last week. Unless it didn't.

In other twitter news, you can now go to Twiddict.com if the whale has reared it's blow hole and you just must post. From the Twiddict site: avoid life-changing withdrawal symptoms during Twitter downtime. We'll make sure your tweets end up where they belong.

I really like the fact that Twiddict exists. I tried Plurk and frankly, it doesn't light me afire. I think Twitter will fix it's 'issues' sooner or later. I hope.
sources: Japanator and Laughing Squid's twitter feed.

Devil Doll of W/R fame (OTP dammit!) found some Wolverine and the XMen images from the upcoming show of the same name. I see no Rogue. WTF, mate?

Tony Bedard (currently writing Birds of Prey) chats with CBR about BoP. He's no Gail Simone - (who is, really?) but I like his work so far.

You want to levitate? Done! Physicists have 'solved' mystery of levitation
source: Dosh Dosh's twitter feed

Kotaku investigates the rumor of a Castlevania game for the Wii and it's manga counterpart.

Do your gaming systems suck up too much energy? Maybe! (unless you're a Wii owner :P)
source: Lifehacker and Wii Fanboy

My mom told me not to talk religion

buuut....why start listening now?

For the record, my stance on religion is this - Let's all just get along. You're a Pastafarian? Enjoy the flying spaghetti monster? That's fine. As long as you don't jam your beliefs down my throat, let's go out for a Ramune together and binge on Twizzlers. Forsooth, it will be good times.

Moving on....

There have been a lot of religious nutjobs in the X-Men end of the universe recently. Specifically - Christian nutjobs. This could set a bad precedent and often times just leads to bad, lazy writing. I think it's a bad idea to lean on overused, negative stereotypes. (Yes, I'd say the same if it was any other religious group).

Picking religious groups as villains is as stale as picking out Nazis as the bad guys. The only notable exception in recent memory is Atlus' new game, Operation Darkness. They're not just nazis, they're werewolf nazis. And that is silly and amusing on multiple levels. But I digress.

From the beginning of X Factor, the Purifiers (spoilers ahoy!) capture Rahne and torture the ever living snot out of her and as of issue 4, seem to have brainwashed her. I am hoping that the book expands to show that while she shares a religion with the Reverend Craig, they are completely and utterly different in how they use religion and/or faith in their lives. Wolverine made a point to X23 about Rahne saying that she is the only one on the team that has something that everyone else has lost - hope and innocence. I'm on the edge of my seat, sincerely hoping that this story continues to unfold in an equal parts moving/disturbing manner, rather than take a 'Hur! Religion bad!' manner. I won't ruin the end of issue 4 - but the religious theme is likely to expand exponentially with the inclusion of Warren/Angel and the army that the Purifiers are building.

X Force Issue 4 Preview (yes I am aware the book is already out, but I thought you might like this anyway)

Speaking of Angel...

I picked up Angel : Revelations #1 (the Marvel Knights miniseries) which is an origin story - similar to DC Comics Year 1 mini series.

I am well aware that its essentially impossible to do a story about a character named Angel and/or Archangel and not have religious overtones. It's got stigmata in the first few pages for Pete's sake. Warren even goes to St. Joe's, a private boarding school (of indeterminate religion). Your Christian nutjob villain shows up in the first 2-3 pages, wreaking havoc. I'm not going to jump to any conclusions on this one just yet. I don't feel like I have enough characterization for anyone (barring Warren) to make any sort of remotely educated guess on where the title is going aside from bad guy is bad. Again, I hold the hope that they keep it classy, or at least thought provoking in a positive manner.

In a mostly related note, for those that like more stylized art and design, the art in Angel is amazing. Just the cover itself is part Art Nouveau and part Illuminated Text style.

So, 'moral' of the story? (see what I did there?) It's dangerous to tread in religious nutjob plot territory - the possibility that it could turn insulting and hackneyed is very real. However, if the writers treat these plotlines with care, they could stand to be some of the strongest stories in the X Universe in a long time.

Do Want vs Do Not Want

Facebreaker video posted @ Kotaku - I think it looks really fun. Naturally all the commenters poo-pooed it as it was not realistic enough. Go play Fight Night then and leave this one to me. File under: Do Want.

People in Tokyo want Krispy Kreme doughnuts and are willing to wait two and a half hours in line to get some. I love those doughnuts, but wow, that's excessive. The last thing I waited that long for was a seat on the Spider Man ride @ Universal.
File under: Too Close to Call.
source: Danny Choo

There is a picture of a Skrull Elektra posted at CBR, but no mention of it in the corresponding article. File under: Do Not Want.

Mildly stale news (only a few days, still very digestible)

There will be a 320 page Street Fighter art book released by Udon. Yours for 80 dollars. A bit steep but I am sure that it will be top quality art, design and paper stock. You can pre-order it here, Daddy Warbucks. :3
File Under: Empty Wallet.
sources: CBR and Majoria's News

Rock Band Drum Kit Mod

Randomly found online - someone set up a Rock Band Drum Kit mod for those gamers that are wheelchair bound. Essentially, the kick pedal is mounted onto a button on the drum stick. A very cool idea!

Read the article here at Kinetic
image from Amazon. ;p