Rick and Morty vs. Dungeons & Dragons: Deluxe Edition by Patrick Rothfuss

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is the definition of a niche product. The only people I think would enjoy this are the intersection in the Venn diagram of D&D fans and Rick and Morty fans. I know I’ve been watching Rick and Morty since the first season and I can’t imagine that I would find this collection if my kids hadn’t gotten me into D&D a year or so ago. Almost all of the humor comes from D&D jokes and Easter Eggs.

The Mocking Dead Volume 1 by Fred Van Lente

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Parodies are hard to do well. The worst parodies are unbearable, the best deconstruct the tropes. I was afraid The Mocking Dead would be the former, but since I got it as part of a huge Humble Bundle, it was nearly free for me to check out. Luckily it turned out to be less Scary Movie and more like something Mel Brooks would put together.

Wizzywig: Portrait of a Serial Hacker by Ed Piskor

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is a commentary on the sad state our country has been in since the 70s and 80s when it comes to computer crime. Although there should always be consequences for skirting the law we have often taken it a bit too far. This graphic novel was sad to read in the wake of Aaron Schwartz’ suicide when threatened by law enforcement.

Comics: A Global History, 1968 to the Present by Dan Mazur

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Disclosure: I received this book as part of the Goodreads.com First Reads program in which the winner recieves a copy of the book in exchange for a review. (It’s slightly more complicated than that, see the Goodreads First Reads terms for all the details)

I love reading these types of histories about culture. I have read similar books about photography and animation published by Taschen. This isn’t my first time reading about the history of comics, I also read 10 Cent Scare and Grant Morrison’s Supergods. Anyone who’s been reading my reviews for a while knows that I love comics and actually run a comics analysis site, www.comicpow.com.

It’s December and I should have gotten all of my Kickstarter products by now. But that’s not exactly what happened. Every single one of my Kickstarters was late except the one I had the least faith and relationship with - Random Encounter’s Let Me Tell You a Story.

I Fight Dragons – Project Atma (music): Holy COW! This band - my first Kickstarter - nearly disbanded over the Kickstarter! I thought they were the surest bet. They’d self-published their first few albums and they had rented a studio and had a producer and everything. However, they clashed over the direction the producer was taking them and almost broke up.

I’m writing this in late August - by the time this post appears I should have received all of my Kickstarter goods or they should be in the mail. Interestingly, even though the Kickstarter backer cycles were spread over about a three month period, they’re all supposed to be delivering the product at around the same time - 4th quarter of this year. As of the time of this writing, this is the status of my Kickstarters:

Here’s a photo of Stan Lee, the man most responsible for modern comics.

[caption id=“attachment_7154” align=“aligncenter” width=“449”] Baltimore Comic-Con - Stan Lee[/caption]

See more photos from last year’s Baltimore Comic-Con here. Sadly I won’t be able to attend this year due to a family commitment.

Those of you who have been reading this blog long enough know that I often write my blog posts during my lunch break at work and set it to post at some point in the future. I’m writing this post almost 1 month before it is to appear on the blog. So in the middle of July I find myself in what many who have backed projects probably experience as the Kickstarter Lull. I backed a project by I Fight Dragons and interviewed them about it here and I backed a comic project by Greg Pak and Jonathan Coulton. During the backing period as a way to drum up support there was a constant stream of both updates and digital goodies. IFD, in particular, gave backers 2 albums (live concert recording and a conceptual album) and a concert film. A little while after the backing period was over, the projects contacted us for the info they needed to fulfill our backer rewards. Since then I haven’t heard from either of them. On the rational side, I’m glad they’re focusing on creating what we paid them to create. But after the constant communications it just feels odd to have “radio” silence. Now we just wait for the products to be created. In the case of these two projects, the members involved are all veterans: IFD put out records before having a record company contract and Greg Pak has already done about a half dozen Kickstarters. So, outside of catastrophe, I don’t fear for my money. I could see where this silence might be more disturbing with an unproven team.

I had no intention of seeing Man of Steel in the movie theater; I was voting for Monsters University. I’ve grown quite tired with the constant universe rebooting. We all know where Superman (or Batman or Spider-Man etc) came from. Can we not waste another 2+ hours and $millions to retell that. Why can’t we just tell new stories? These characters have such rich histories and such iconic villains that it just seems so pointless to keep hitting the same notes. Additionally, while I liked Snyder’s Watchmen, I was NOT a fan of Suckerpunch. But my parents wanted to treat Danielle and I to a nice dinner for our wedding anniversary and Man of Steel was the movie that would get us out of the theater in time to make out reservations.

The thing I like the most about Twitter is the ability to interact with creatives in real time.  In the past you had to write a letter to a writer, artist, musician, etc and hope that, maybe, they’d actually read it and that, maybe, they’d feel compelled to reply with something more than boilerplate.  I started following Paolo Rivera after meeting him at Baltimore Comic-Con.  (Related topic: meeting a bunch of creators in person at Baltimore Comic-Con helped make them more “real” to me.  I’m not a jerky person, but it really does give me pause when I post a criticism to someone on twitter.  Unlike these guys.)  So when Paolo tweeted something from his blog that I wanted to comment on, I kept failing the captcha he had on the comments.  I tweeted and (to my surprise) was retweeted by Paolo:

One always wonders if and when those classes you take in high school will be important.  For me, as an engineer, most of my high school classes were laying the foundation for the classes I’d take in college.  I’ve used plenty of those classes in my work and personal life.  One of the classes that has served me well all these years was Speech and Debate.  You don’t realize how long a minute is until you have to talk for a minute in front of class.  It has helped me with college presentation and work presentations.  Most recently, the following two video reviews were completely ad-libbed.  I didn’t even have any notes to go off of.  (In the AvX video I did take the comic with me to remember the name of the penciller)

Start here before FF Fantastic Four By Jonathan Hickman # 1 - Volume 1 I’ve always been a Fantastic Four fan, but it’d been a long time since I last read F4 when I picked up FF. Being as this was a #1 of a new title, I was very confused about what in the world was going on with the Future Foundation. I knew what’d happened to ellicit the name change, but that’s about it. Well, if you read this book, it will all make sense. Right from the beginning you meet one of the future members of the FF. And later on you meet almost all of the rest of them. This TP also introduces the Reed Council which is the whole reason for the the first FF story arc. Hickman is like Marvel’s Grant Morrison. If you really want to understand FF, you are really going to need to AT LEAST read his run on F4. By the end of this TP, almost EVERYTHING from FF had been setup. I’d say, about 15-20% has yet to occur.

Not Feelin’ It Astonishing X-Men # 36 - Monstrous, Part 1 The only story arc in Astonishing I haven’t read yet is Exogenic. I am really not liking this one. I know this is the first issue, but I’ve also read the third one due to when I got into Astonishing. I really, really hate this art style. It just looks weird and almost like a super deformed (in the manga sense) version of the X-Men and I don’t think it fits with the previous art style or tone of the book.

It was OK Uncanny X-Men # 539 - Losing Hope I was hoping this was linked to what happened in Generation Hope #8, but sadly it does not appear to be. We do get to see how M-Day has affected some former mutants, and that’s neat. We also get to see why Wolverine acts so strange around her. (Although an astute reader probably already guessed why) This issue felt like a very fast read and I wasn’t left as satisfied as I’ve been with recent Gillen works. Oh well. You win some, you lose some.

Injecting some fresh blood into the X-Men Generation Hope: The Future is a Four-Letter Word # 1 - TPB We live in a world where the big comic companies are in financial trouble. We’ve got so many things to occupy our attention and many of them are free. So we’re drowning in reboots and revamps and retellings. Ghost Rider is a woman now. Captain America is back for the umpteenth time. So it’s quite refreshing to see Marvel going in a different direction with the X-Men. Rather than doing a reboot so we can see the X-Men when they first became X-Men, they are introducing new, young mutants.

Good Focus on the New Guy Batman, Incorporated # 7 - Medicine Soldiers I like this Batman, Inc issue because it mostly focused on the new guy with Batman playing a very small part. The dynamic between Man-of-Bats and Raven is played very well. There’s a lot of history here and you can feel it. The only bad thing with this issue is the same as all the other issues, it feels like these books need to be a bit longer. I feel like too much story is getting compressed into too few pages and the story’s suffering a bit for it. I think it’d be best if these were all two-parters like the series-opening Japanese story.

Glad I Waited Uncanny X-Men # 535 - Breaking Point, Part One I just got back into comics in May after a 10-12 year hiatus. boy have I missed a lot! So I’ve been working my way through the trade paperbacks and hard covers to get caught up on just what happened to one of my favorite Marvel teams. I was going to read this issue when I saw in issue 534.1 that it involves the Breakworld which was mentioned as returning for the first time since Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men. So I put this issue aside and finished reading my Morrison New X-Men so I could read Astonishing X-Men. All of this is a very roundabout way of saying - it’s perfect for me! It’s as though things are picking up where that story left off. We have Kitty still intangible and even Danger (the embodiment of The Danger Room) still around. The only thing different is that Beast is gone because he is now with the Secret Avengers. (And Armor was left behind on purpose) And so this storyline is awesome for me, but what about the regulars?

A Fitting Followup to Morrison’s Run Astonishing X-Men Omnibus # 1 - Astonishing X-Men Omnibus I came into this right on the heels of Morrison’s run in the Ultimate 3 Volume collection. I know there’s an Uncanny Volume that takes place between the two, but it doesn’t look like it contained anything that kept me from understanding what was going on in this story. (Plus this Omnibus version has an intro to the X-Men that explains where Professor X is)

Things Really get Real New X-Men Ultimate Collection # 2 - Book 2 At first the book continues directly from the previous one. We learn that Prof X can walk because Xorn healed his spine (although I thought it was that his legs were crushed? Perhaps that was retconned at some point). Prof X is working on a Cerebra upgrade to telepathically remote-control mutants to help them get out of dangerous situations? No possible way that could go wrong! Sometimes Xavier really does carry the idiot ball. (Although it ends up not being a plot point so far)

Morrison at his BEST! New X-Men Ultimate Collection # 1 - Book 1 Holy cow! That’s not strong enough, that volume requires some high level “Whoa!” and “DID YOUO SEE THAT?” and all kinds of profanity (if you happen to condone such tings) to describe what a ride it was to read Morrison’s take on the X-Men. When you read the description on the back of the book which happens to, at the time of this review, match the description here on Comic Vine, it sounds like marketing BS. Every new writer is claimed to “have turned the (franchise name) on its (body part)” and “You’ve never seen (franchise name) like this!” This time it’s real. Like Frank Miller and Alan Moore, Morrison has brought grit to the X-Men universe. And it appears to have stuck, as I read today’s issues in the multitude of X-Books Marvel has seen fit to produce. Because this is a collection of issues and because it was originally released 10 years ago, I’m going to have some light spoilers here and there. I know there’s a spoiler button here on CV and I’ve used it on previous reviews. But that’s like using the spoiler button for Citizen Kane. If you don’t wish to see any of them, you can stop reading after the next sentence. If you like the X-Men and if you want to know where to jump on to get caught up with the current continuity, I can’t think of a better place to start.

And it’s over…. X-Men: Complete Onslaught Epic # 4 - Volume 4 So, here we are. The end of of a huge Marvel crossover that led directly into Heroes Reborn. (And maybe even was created solely for that purpose?) This thing went back a few years if you count all the hints they were dropping - even if they hadn’t figured out the entire plot yet back then.

Fantastic Four #416 - Franklin’s attempts to get help manifest as bad guys because Onslaught mucks about with them. This issue has no progress on fighting Onslaught… Awesome personal growth for Ben Grimm. Dr Doom is so awesomely bad ass! I love the way he talks and the way he speaks. It’s so awesome whenever he’s there. And this plus FF signals at least twice that they’ve had to join forces. Slightly pointless other than to gather all the heroes at FF Tower as more and more super heroes keep dropping in.

Pause the Action. Survey the World X-Men: Complete Onslaught Epic # 2 - Volume 2 For the most part Volume 2 of Onslaught: the Complete Epic is just filler. The first issue or two deal with the X-Men on their mission to deal with Onslaught. Reveals that Xavier is like Batman: crazy prepared! He has files on how to kill each of the X-Men. That was neat to see. The issue where Wovlerine talks to this Aboriginal mutant was pretty awesome. Esp the fact that such a guy exists. But the rest of the book just seemed like filler that could have been safely ignored.

Back to the Action Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight: Time of Your Life # 1 - Time of your Life After the last trade paperback, which was mostly laughs, we jump right back into the fray. (No pun intended) Buffy ends up sucked into the Future of Whedon’s Fray comic. Like the licensed and fan fiction that was written between the release of the Star Wars IV and Star Wars V, it can often be a mess to figure out continuity when you don’t know where you’re going to go creatively. Buffy ended in 2003 and Fray was mostly written in 2001. So when they started this future world, they didn’t know how the end of Buffy (the TV show) was going to end up with tons of girls activated as Slayers. So I think this book was Whedon rectifying the future and present of Buffy. Although you’re left wondering whether that future is still canon.

Is X-Men: Legacy always this confusing? X-Men: Legacy # 250 - Lost Legions, Part 1; Flashback; Into the Abyss This is only my second issue of X-Men: Legacy, but it seems to jump around more than the other Marvel books I’m reading. When #249 ended, we saw Rogue and Magneto maybe about to get it on. This issue - no mention of it at all. Really, after how big a deal it was in the previous issue you’d think there’d at least be some more movement on whether rogue was going to stay with Magneto. Instead, all of a sudden we’re looking for Legion’s personalities. Where the heck did that come from? In 249 he was just cycling through his personalities while connected to some machine. Still, it was a fun fight and the personality they have to catch in this issue has a neat power. Makes it really hard to fight him legitimately.

Holy Freakin’ Wow! Detective Comics # 875 - Lost Boys I loved this issue from cover to cover! First time I can say that in 2011! Wow! I loved Bullock’s section even though it didn’t really have anything to do with the story. I loved how it was drawn and coloured and how his narration squares were drawn. And Gordon’s story was insane. I loved how slow and methodical it was - perfect for a book called Detective Comics! I also loved the backstory into his life. And the shock ending! Man! I can’t wait to get to the next one. Snyder really hit the ball out of the park on this one!

Like a fun Sci-Fi Movie Astonishing X-Men # 38 - “Meanwhile” Part One This issue reads like a fun sci-fi movie. It’s great - it’s almost like a cross-over comic I read a decade ago where Superman ends up on the planet with the Aliens from Alien. In fact, the X-Men go to investigate a space station and the plot more or less becoems the plot to Alien. However, it’s quite compressed and ends up with a crazy ending. The character designs are a lot of fun - love the new Beast look. (New for me, at least) I don’t care that this book doesn’t fit into the timeline with the rest of the X-Men books, it’s a ton of fun to read. Another book for my ever-increasing pull list.

Falls off so quickly The Batman Chronicles # 7 - The first story is pretty neat - you get to see differences in how Batman and Superman interpret the law and due process as they fight to save a woman who may have been falsely put to the death penalty. And Batman and Supes even disagree on what circumstances would mean she was there falsely. I liked it a lot.

Another Good Arc Intro Batman and Robin # 23 - The Streets Run Red, Part 1 of 3: Ins and Outs And, I should mention, another cover that lies. (Been seeing a lot of those on the 2011 FF book) Anyway, I’m not sure how much of this sticks with the DCU Reboot/Refresh, but it looks like most of the current continuity does. (With changes like Barb being out of a wheelchair) But this arc definitely has time to end before September. It is low on action at first, but I think it sets up the characters’ motivations and actions quite well. As someone who knows the story of The Red Hood, but never read any of those books, it’s a great quick intro in why he is the way he is. I didn’t feel too bored and there were scenes where I was quite glad that there are now comics that are rated Teen so they could get into the rougher stuff. The news about the new DCU is that he’s going to have his own book and if he retains most of the characterization he has in this book, I’ll DEFINITELY have it on my pull list. In a way, he’s like the Batman of the Flashpoint universe - able to kill the bad guys rather than wait for the justice system. And so this sets him up for an interesting dynamic vs the bad guys, Nightwing, Batman, the other Robins, and Batgirl. I can’t wait.

I wanted to share my comic book reviews with my blog-reading audience without forcing them to go to Comic Vine to find them.

Leaves you Wanting More Gotham City Sirens # 23 - Friends, Part 1 I am just returning to reading comics after a 12 year hiatus. Additionally, I was never that big into DC Comics. Most of my Batman exposure comes from Batman: The Animated Series. (And the Arkham video game) But I jumped into Gotham City Sirens because I’ve always loved the villianesses of Batman’s Rogue Gallery.

Entirely separately from my recent reintroduction into the traditional comic world, I’ve been into graphic novels, as you’ve probably read on this blog.  An article I read on Cracked brought The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (LoEG) back into my consciousness and then I read the [non-comic] books The Map of Time and Dracula.  So I was primed for another story that takes its literary cues from the Victorian Age.  The only other Moore books I’d read are Watchmen and The Killing Joke.  I enjoyed them both and so I looked forward to this one.

note: this was written on 1 June then put into my blog queue

I don’t remember exactly what made me decide to check out some new comics, but I think it was a mix of inventorying my comics and clicking over to the Whiskey Media site, Comic Vine.  In the reviews for May’s comics, two books sounded interesting: FF and Gotham City Sirens.  I went to my local comic book shop, Comics to Astonish, and also ended up picking up a bunch of issues from the old Harley Quinn book.  As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I was always into Marvel so I surprisingly chose to read Gotham City Sirens (GCS) as my first super hero comic since 1997.

Recently I was thinking about cataloguing my comic books.  Recent family events convinced me to get on with it and so I spent all weekend putting the information into the KDE collection database Tellico.  It had lots of useful fields to fill out, so I figured I was probably only going to do this once and so I may as well do it correctly.  I entered in the names of the writers, pencillers, inkers, and so on.  And I learned some interesting stuff.

Last weekend Danielle and I went to Borders so Danielle could check out the Buffy graphic novels and I could pick up Watchmen. While in the graphic novel section I started looking around to see what new books were out in this space and I came across Beyond Wonderland and Return to Wonderland, two comics in Zenoscope’s Grimm Fairy Tales line. From the busty cover on Beyond Wonderland, I thought it might be like Clamp’s Miyuki-chan in Wonderland.

[caption id=“attachment_2161” align=“aligncenter” width=“300” caption=“xkcd - Can’t Sleep”] [/caption]

The funny thing is that if you’ve been burned by this in your programming, you’ll find it tragically funny.  All kinds of disasters from mundane to NASA-level have ocurred because people didn’t make their variables large enough.  Thanks for that reminder, xkcd.

This has also aways bothered me.  As usual, Randall, at xkcd, has put in a comic what was in my head.  Recently, I was thinking of making a post about how old concepts from the 1400s and 1500s still influence our terminology and words today.  One of the most prominent ones you often hear on the news is the reference of Europe as The West and China, et al as the East.  That never made sense to me growing up.  But if you consider that all of our history and culture is Eurocentric, it all makes sense.  Europe “discovered” the world.  And from Europe’s point of view, Asia and everywhere else in the world was The East.  That’s why people weren’t sure that if Columbus sailed West that he would get to the East before he ran out of supplies.

So, I was working on fixing up some armature problems with the characters for I’m Not Mad.  If you watch David’s Lip Sync you can see there were some major fixes needed for the Dan and Dave characters.  Well, in the time since I started working on the character models Blender 2.46 was released.  In 2.46 a new Hair Particle system was added to make working with hair a lot easier.  So, here’s the David character’s new hair.

Be sure to visit xkcd to read the tool tip, it’s extra hilarious.

I think Randall’s back in form after some especially abstract comics.

from our friends over at xkcd:

Second best xkcd this month!

3/4ths of this XKCD strip explain exactly how I feel about having kids.

Enjoy this xkcd:

Thanks, as usual, to Monroe of xkcd:

If you’ve ever looked at a reprint of the Kama Sutra, I think you’ll agree that reading it without being careful can lead to some interesting things.  Such as this:

The plot twist at the end is awesome, but so is the programmer’s debate going on, especially since we were talking about this at work this week. Another great xkcd from Randall Monroe:

Reminding us that perhaps mom wasn’t telling the truth every time….

Afterall, if it’s real, why not show it to everyone?  Here’s a great xkcd strip to illustrate:

This had the subtitle: Facebook defines relationships. ‘Yeah, we would have broken up last night, but the net connection was down.’

Blogged with Flock

Tags: Facebook, xkcd

I think that the single largest source of mirth at the Thanksgiving dinner was Dan’s xkcd tshirt.  Dan and I were the only ones who knew what this meant.  Dave was the only other person capable of grasping it.  Everyone else kept asking Dan to explain the shirt over and over.  No matter how many ways he tried to do it, the response was always “I don’t get it”.  Later on the response was a sarcastic “OK”.  Later on in the evening/night everyone was sudo ordering people to do things even though they had no idea what that meant.  The person who was ordered to do something would invariably answer “OK!”  IT was hilarious and maddening at the same time.

from the brilliant mind over at xkcd who captured exactly how I feel when I’m apart from my better half:

Another great comic brought to us by xkcd:

another great one from xkcd:

What did you think when you saw the first panel? I thought of Roadrunner cartoons RIGHT AWAY!

xkcd has this one for you:

This weekend was pretty great. I got to spend a lot of time with my wife. They were supposed to call her in on Saturday, but it got canceled, so that made our time together more enjoyable.

Dan came over and we watched him play Guitar Hero 2 on the PS2. I gave it a shot, but it was actually a little painful on my phret (fret?) fingers. The overall game is a pretty good concept and the music was pretty good. But, because it was music being played, it felt a bit repetitive. I’ll probably have to give it another shot to be fair. courtesy of Randall Monroe over at xkcd Tried watching “Little Miss Sunshine” on OnDemand. But the POS kept going on the fritz. We decided “to hell with it” and went back to bumping Netflix to an infinite number of discs per month. Today it kept messing up while Danielle was trying to watch some sort of scary movie.

Another great comic from xkcd:

Yet another awesome xkcd comic:

Another wonderful comic from xkcd:

Again, courtesy of xkcd, here’s one I just can’t stop going back to look at.

I found this great web comic, xkcd, courtesy of my brother Dan. I don’t know how the site is overall and they do have a warning that some strips could be bad, but I found this one hilarious.

I love this particular strip because of the crazy circular logic involved to keep yourself sane if you start to succomb to urban legends and conspiracy theories. Here’s a mind trip for you - if The Matrix was real as told in the movie The Matrix, then the machines should make the movie The Matrix so that we would think it was just Hollywood machinations. If anyone came to us saying that The Matrix was real, we’d just dismiss them as a looney fanboy. Before we might think they were crazy, but maybe not. But after the movie came out, if they suggested such a thing, they got it from watching the movie. I know…don’t think about it too hard…..

It’s interesting how Science Fiction often predicts future technologies and trends. For example, this morning on CNN they were talking about a research group that is trying to switch on the gene in humans that would cause limbs to regrow. Apparently they haven’t seen what happens when you do that (I say tongue-in-cheek). Peter Parker’s favorite professor was trying to regrow his arm and his technique, which I believe involved splicing reptilian DNA, turned him into one of Spiderman’s fiercest foes, The Lizard.

Technology continues to be an amazing force and I’m always amazed at even the little things that technology can achieve. Until I was in High School I used to read Marvel comics every month when a new issue would come out. There were only three Marvel comics I cared about: (which happen to be some of the most famous ones) Spiderman, The Fantastic Four, and X-Men.

I liked Spiderman because he was really witty. Even when he was getting beaten up by his enemies, he would still make fun of them with all sorts of wise guy remarks. I also liked the fact that he always had a lot of real-world problems. Unlike a lot of other super heroes he always had problems. His best friend’s dad goes crazy and he is constantly battling with him. Jameson, at the newpaper, is always writing bad articles about Spiderman. No matter how good of a job he does, Jameson is always dragging his name through the mud. He has issues with MJ about why he is always dissapearing. Unlike Lois Lane, she doesn’t naively accept this, she gets ticked and goes out with other guys. Also, for most of the time, his Aunt May, who he so dearly loves, hates Spiderman.