LunarKnight

I really liked RIP myself. It didn't wrap up quite as well as it needed to, but there were several moments that made the whole thing worthwhile. Punctuating Jezebel slipping on the black glove with the Joker's maniacal laugh and "do you get it?" was awesome. Pulling Zur En Ar from ancient Batman history and giving it a powerful meaning was terrific. Overall though, the best issue of the whole thing is Bruce's run as the Purple/Red Batman. Threatening the thug with the "batradia" was just hilarious, as were several bits of the conversation with the gargoyles. It's a shame it sort of got marred by FC, but RIP itself was one of the more interesting and original Batman stories I've read in ages, IMO.

I haven't read the vampire thing personally. I actually don't think its a bad idea, just really poorly timed. The X-Men needed something a little more grounded immediately after Second Coming. The vampires really just feels like it should have been done a little later, under a little lower profile.

I dropped Thunderbolts somewhere in the middle of Secret Invasion. I just knew there was no way anything was going to live up to Caged Angels and figured it was a good time for a change. I haven't touched Hulk since Iron Man's "oh the humanity" bit with the Golden Helicarrier and Spidey's been off the list since OMD became my first comic ever to go through the shredder.

I dropped most of the Avengers stuff during Dark Reign, which was mostly not what I wanted out of the concept, particularly as New Avengers became the biggest batch of do nothings ever. Post-Siege I've been reading Secret Avengers, but thus far it hasn't really done anything to lock me in. I tried Avengers proper, but between the art and premise I didn't last more than an issue or two. Really, outside of cosmic, I read Cap and Iron Man, neither of which have really wowed me in quite a while.

Honestly, none of my former great Marvel loves have been very interesting since Siege. The only thing that's kept up its quality thus far is the cosmic stuff.

This concept of 'wuv' confuses and INFURIATES US!

The very first issue heavily implied that Rick Jones was the Red Hulk, but it turned out he was the Blue Abomination (A-Bomb) instead. I wish people wouldn't keep forcing me to remember that...

Messiah Complex was good, but didn't end quite as strongly as I would have liked. Messiah War was outright terrible and entirely pointless. Second Coming was really good outside a couple of needless and horribly obvious character deaths. The only real problem I have with the series is their tendency to go nowhere and focus on too many stories instead of telling one really good one.

X-Factor annoys me in its position of "consistently almost great". There's great, long running plot threads always going that generally amount to fantastic character moments, but then it will get sidetracked for 3 months or so and feel entirely mediocre. I do love the book; I just wish it jumped to its heights more often.

Their cosmic stuff is still pretty good. That's about it though.

Particularly since Rulky kills Ross in one issue...

hur hur LMD duh!

***COMIC/MOVIE SPOILERS BELOW***

You know, the point where that bit is put into the movie is sort of weird and I wonder how it came about. (I'm assuming this is the thing they showed on Adult Swim animating the River City Ransom scene in the comics?) In the movie Scott sarcastically tells the whole story to Romona and she brushes it off as him being a jerk.

I sort of wonder if they thought it would be a hilarious nod to the fans to have Ramona brush it off like that, while we all giggle secretly knowing that it really happened. If that's the case, I have to assume said decision was made before O'Malley decided to reveal in the last book that it didn't really happen that way. I had the strangest reaction to it in the theater, because it felt like an in joke that wasn't funny because it was true. Like a guy joking about his girlfriend cheating on him when you know she is, in fact, cheating on him.

Honestly, while I don't LIKE Frankencastle, the story itself doesn't bother me. It's clearly not intended to be a permanent change; just something goofy and different to do with the character for a while. Part of the Punisher's problem is that he's such a one note character you can only do so much with him. Giving him the random bizarre detour ever now and then isn't so bad. Punisher remains fine as long as you don't try to screw with what makes him interesting in the first place. Like don't send him back in time and accidentally be the one that killed his family. That's the kind of stuff that JMS does that causes so much trouble.

Yeah, I've never liked awkward humor. Main reason I'm not a fan of the Situation Comedy either. I can do dark humor well enough, but whenever I hear a laugh track over someone's pain I change the channel.

Did you see that one where the couple gets together via an improbable lie, but then when the lie is revealed they break up, only to realize they care about each other more than the lie and get back together in act 3? I love that one.

Well, in all fairness, at least when they reset that one, they reset the whole darn universe along with it.

I'm actually curious how Sex Bob-omb compares to their comic counterpart. The guitar chart is in the comic when they play, but I don't read guitar cords well enough to be able to tell you what it actually sounds like.

JoeQ takes the original wedding issue and inserts his own art and pages in to make the wedding never happen. The reason he misses the wedding is because a fat guy somehow manages to throw a cinder block and hit him in the head, then fall on him and pin him so he can't get up. Then MJ decides they should be together forever, but never marry because he'd be just like her abusive father.

Sadly, I still haven't gotten to the movie (tomorrow or Friday a crew is going; had to spend opening weekend out of town helping some friends get married). That said, from the comic perspective, not knowing if the movie covers this:

****SPOILER ANSWERS****

2. Nega-Scott was created by Scott living in denial of his past mistakes, the biggest of which were how he handled his high school romances.

That's not really what he's talking about. He's more referring to the idea that for the most part, the graphic novel genre has been completely absorbed by stagnant super hero tropes, to the point where legitimate art like Y can't be taken seriously because it is assumed to be another teen power fantasy. There's a lot of talk of the wasted potential of the comic book medium that I assume he's referring too, and he fears videogames' love of shooting things may lock it into a similar niche.

Ok, there's not doing a villain right and then there's not even aiming in the general direction of the target.

Personally, I'd love to see games start adding some randomization to their setpieces. Take the first Resident Evil and in particular, the dog through the window scene. There are at least 3 versions of this scene I know of; probably more made in the different rereleases. How much scarier would that game be if instead of a scripted event like that, the game picked one of several possible scripted events when you ran through the room?

This is generally true of nearly every philosophy book ever written.

Probably in a similar way, though a couple oddly connected lines in last night's episode lead me to believe they might be planning to do so in a different way.

I've been playing River City Ransom all week waiting for this to come out.

In all honesty, MMOs haven't really expanded all that far beyond the old lobby systems that online gaming was first built around. You meet up in a central gathering location, isolate yourselves from other players, then go adventure as a small party. The only real difference is that the place you go adventuring is part of an open world where you come across other, isolated groups of players. The problem is that games generally want to provide isolated experiences to players, despite dropping them into shared environments. This leads to environments balanced around the isolated group, with a bunch of heavy handed rules to avoid exploitation and griefing that mostly serve to further isolate players from one another. It's reached a point where you might as well simply make the persistent world a hub, and design most of your content in isolated instances.

I think if the true massive MO experience is going to continue, rather than contract into a smaller experience, its going to have to find a way to embrace the petty, squabbling masses and make the persistent concept something that matters. Likely this means going back to the MMO roots, and giving players paths to follow other than adventurers, replacing the game's usual PCs with players instead. It also likely means finding a way to keep the players persistent in the world, even when they're not logged on. Giving them a day job that serves the other active players as a shopkeeper, bodyguard, doctor, or whatever when they're not online. It also means letting them radically effect the world, which is the most difficult task to include while keeping the game fun.

Do I think any of this will happen? Absolutely not. Players in general are simply too self centered, impatient, and prone to treating one another poorly for a real persistent, unguided experience to do anything but drive its playerbase away rather quickly. I think the answer is simply to regress to a less massive scale. Hubs where players can chat and gather with instances of designed combat. The true open world game is a neat premise; it just doesn't seem to hold up in theory to the reality of the community it attracts.