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Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Where does the time go?

Good googally moogally. I can't believe its been two months since my last post.
In that time there have been a few changes at work a lot of extra hours and a bit of wandering of the mental variety.
If you go to the site, you'll see that there's the start of a new game posted. This is a CoC adventure set around Route 66. Considering it started, the actual Route, that is, in 1926, I'm surprised I was the first to think of basing an adventure/campaign around them.
I didn't record the character generation session, because I had no idea if it would be interesting.
So, of course, it turned out to be one of the most interesting sessions yet.
Anyway, there's another session in the bag that I'll post tonight. Melinda's new work schedule is making it difficult to get everyone together. 3 to 11 is not conductive to social activities, even less so that 11 to 7!
Anyway...
Comics that I am reading that you should try!
It was a few years ago when, in a stroke of long overdue genius, that Marvel and DC decided to finally have the big crossover that every ten year old comic fan had been having on the schoolyard with his friends for the past thirty years. To kick it off, they had a big VS series where the readers would decide the outcome via a call-in number, much like the one that killed old Robin back in the day.
It was while I was thinking about my votes, as a man in my twenties, that I realized something that I didn't know about myself til then.
One, that I was and am a tremendous dork, not that I have a tremendous dork, its huge at best, and two; that I'm a DC fanboy.
I mean, when you pick notch-shaved head Superboy over Spiderman, there's no dancing around it.
This brings me back to my comic recommendations. I haven't purchased a lot of Marvel comics in recent years. Blame the Big Event mentality, blame BND, or just chalk it up to personal taste. Agents of Atlas is a definite must read for me. I'll talk about it and my particular love for it in another post but its a strong book.
Independants are what I read mostly and will probably make up the rest of this impromptu list.
Invincible.
Its my favorite solo-hero title, bar none. Even when the gore flies, the book still has me tightly in its grip. One of its strongest features, I find, is its willingness to kill any of the supporting cast if it fits the story. Nobody is safe. Heck, this last arc had me wondering if the main character was safe! The art by Ryan Ottley is jaw dropping at times and always pleasing. Robert Kirkman's scripts are tight and gripping.
Dynamo Five.
This is my favorite team book. The concept is fresh and the story is fantastic. Every issue continues to get stronger and stronger. No second-year slump for this title.

And, my biggest recent dissapointments:
Green Arrow/Black Canary. Bleh. The writing is horrid, the art is passable, and the characters are far from how they've ever been depicted before. If I decide to start giving stars this would be my first half-star title. Its on paper, there are pictures and words, and that is the extent of the good things I have to say about it.
I'm still pretty disgusted for how Birds of Prey, Nightwing, and Robin all got the bullet behind the woodshed to make way for the new 'status quo' in the bat-family. None more than BoP. If for no other reason than, in every other appearance of the characters from that book, they've been marginalized or greatly changed.
Enough of that rant.
My other big dissapointment title: JLA. After digging around a bit and finding out how Dwayne McDuffie's hands were tied while he tried to write a book about the greatest superhero team in the DCU, I feel for him. Its sad watching a writer whose work I love get chopped off at the kneess and then blamed when the product isn't interesting to readers.
Since his departure, the slide into mediocrity continues. I have seen solicits for a new line-up that will include variants of the Big Three that should always be available. What a great idea! Why couldn't they have given at least one or two of these to McDuffie a year ago?
Well, new comics come out tomorrow so here's hoping for a gem.
Randy

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