Disco Comics: Nailbiter #7

Disco Comics: Nailbiter #7

This is a bit more staid.

Writing: Joshua Williamson

Art: Mike Henderson

My local comic book store is selling very old comics that no one wants for 50c each. I’m a cheap bastard and I love hating things so these are my Discount Comics.

What with Nailbiter being a weird mystery story set in the Pacific Northwest, I missed the comparisons to Twin Peaks when I talked about Nailbiter #5. Twin Peaks did this stuff right; “Mystery story? Nah; here’s some meaningless psychadelics. Hey look,” it then says, while pointing to a figure ducking behind a barn, “It’s The Mystery!” As you eagerly run towards it, Twin Peaks trips you and then laughs at you for watching it. I respect Twin Peaks for so aggressively refusing to give fucks.

Disco Comics: Nailbiter #5

Nailbiter #5 (Sept 2014)

I’m seriously intrigued, whatever this is.

Writing: Joshua Williamson

Art: Mike Henderson

My local comic book store is selling very old comics that no one wants for 50c each. I’m a cheap bastard and I love hating things so these are my Discount Comics.

The deal with Nailbiter is that it’s an ongoing mystery story set in a small, Pacific Northwest town where federal agents and local law enforcement try to find out why so many of its residents become serial killers. Its visuals are wasted on the excessive dialog and this issue had a plug for a tie-in book. Those Issue 1 sales numbers must’ve been encouraging.

Nailbiter shows why things like this should be released as graphic novels. Why place a mystery at the center of an ongoing story? Mysteries do not work that way. Either you have an indefinite deferred mystery story or end up running plot threads of multiple plot threads all over the book and it becomes possible for the reader to engage or suspend disbelief. Nailbiter could lean on intricate characterization, but it’s just a dump truck of stock characters who are distinguished visually and by their hidden motivations.

By the way, Nailbiter went with “indefinite deferment.” In this one issue, a new FBI agent appears, a lead character is is accused of murder, a third serial killer appears—there were two before—a kid goes missing, someone central to the conspiracy is murdered, the only suspect is released because law enforcement couldn’t move the story forward any better than Joshua fucking Williams, and that suspect saves the protagonist which sets Mystery Number One back to zero. Also the previous investigator is still in a coma and an exhausting heterosexual romance between two white people in their twenties is hinted at.

I have zero investment in this story and I was still frustrated at how busily it marked time.

It's the Magic: Standard Tour of San Antonio: Gamelot Friday Night Magic

While the internet is full of ways to find game stores in your area, it does very little to tell you about the real character of those stores: their atmosphere, their product, their staff, or anything else a curious gamer might want to know. To help others out, I've started a week-by-week tour of the stores in my area, playing a Friday Night Magic at each one and sharing the results with you.

Last week I went to Gamelot, located at 7007 Bandera Road, on the corner where Bandera meets Huebner.  As is tradition, last week I covered the store in general, saving the results of the Friday Night Magic for today.

The actual event was better than expected. It was a standard constructed affair and I brought a White/Blue Venser/Karn deck that was--well, to be honest, it was designed to troll competitive decks by not dying via Venser and Stonehorn dignitary, then restarting the game via Karn.

For your opponent, it starts like "Cause and Effect," but ends like "Remember Me."

The Avengers, Part Two

Wednesday, I put up the first part of my response to the thoroughly enjoyable and quite popular The Avengers film. It was too big to finish in one post (a good argument could have been made for three), so today's the conclusion.

Blah, blah, spoilers after the cut.

The Avengers, Part One

The Avengers is fucking awesome. You know it. I know it. A few million people know it.

Mainly because of stuff like this.
Image taken from here.

Spoilers below:

It's the Magic: Standard Tour of San Antonio: Gamelot

While the internet is full of ways to find game stores in your area, it does very little to tell you about the real character of those stores: their atmosphere, their product, their staff, or anything else a curious gamer might want to know. To help others out, I've started a week-by-week survey of the stores in my area, playing a Friday Night Magic at each one as a way of familiarizing myself with it.

This week I went to Gamelot, located at 7007 Bandera Road, on the corner where Bandera meets Huebner.

Gamelot says it's San Antonio's gaming megastore. That's very true. While I could quibble square footage with Heroes & Fantasies, one is a comics and collectibles store with an impressive gaming apparatus while the other is a massive store pulsating with games. Even packed with the traffic from the Friday night of a new set release for Magic, the play environment for the whole event was comfortable.

Of course, like all of the other places I've visited, Gamelot does more than just Magic. Magic was actually in a separate play area while a Yu-Gi-Oh tournament occupied the main floor, between the miniatures games and LAN center. All of those areas were buzzing with players. I'll confess to some ignorance of the LAN facilities, but I've seen League of Legends, World of Warcraft, DC Universe Online, and Star Wars: The Old Republic being played there.

 

Comics: Stormwatch, issues #1-6

In 1993, Wildstorm comics launched Stormwatch, a typical 90's blood n' guts/faux military comic book with gritted tooth heroes protagonists. The series was forgettable until Warren Ellis—The Most Awesome Deflier—took over, gutted it, and spent 25 issues bashing America and stroking pet characters until the series was canceled and the non-pet characters killed off in a WildC.A.T.s/Aliens crossover/cashgrab.

It sounds terrible—barely footnoteworthy[1], but it was seminal and those pet characters[2] became plank owners for The Authority.

Also written by Ellis, The Authority was the prototype of big-screen, no-holds-barred, decompressed storytelling. The adolescent, oversexed, ultra-violent comics of the 90's finally evolved into mature, slightly-sexed, ultra-violent comics of the 00's. The Authority's success—and it was successful—was largely due to being well written (first by Ellis, then by Mark Millar) and being something completely different.

There Will Be Brawl, Episode 3: Questions

 

There Will Be Brawl is a web series that creates--and then exposes--the seedy underbelly of well-known Nintendo characters with exceptional dedication and insane unpredictability. It's the entire internet in ten minutes. Minus the furries.

For a series that's only ten episodes long, There Will Be Brawl is almost audacious to wait until the third episode to throw our protagonist (Luigi) into the central conflict. I'm assuming that one of the lesser reasons for putting that off is because that the acting doesn't spike up in quality to match the intensity of the characters. I hope that passion is a commodity that the creators sprinkled lightly over the series, because it just doesn't work and probably won't come to in the next seven episodes.

It's the Magic: Standard Tour of San Antonio - Heroes and Fantasies

While the internet is full of ways to find game stores in your area, it does very little to tell you about the real character of those stores: their atmosphere, their product, their staff, or anything else a curious gamer might want to know. To help others out, I've started a week-by-week survey of the stores in my area, playing a Friday Night Magic at each one as a way of familiarizing myself with it.

This week I went to Heroes & Fantasies, located at 4945 NW Loop 410, nestled along the back of a shopping center just off the I-410 frontage road, just off Evers Road.

The tag for Heroes & Fantasies is "Where families collect." I don't think anyone can contest that. This place is chock full of collectables. Statues and statuettes of every variety dot the store, ranging from simple, desktop busts of Rorschach to a five-foot Spider-Man (complete with webs). If there's a famous comic book story line, there's probably a statue of it at Heroes & Fantasies. Of course, it wouldn't really be a wonderland of nerd collectibles if it didn't have action figures. They have new figures, like Matt Smith's Doctor Who), still-packaged action figures for characters I thought I'd never I'd see (like "Klingon" from the Deep Space Nine episode where they went back in time to Kirk's show), and used figures. The used ones were my favorite, as they consisted of banged-up X-Wings, vintage Star Wars guys, and a metric ton of toys I actually had back in the day. There are even separate displays dedicated to fantasy-inspired merchandise and baseball cards.

It's the Magic: Standard Tour of San Antonio - Dragon's Lair FNM

While the internet is full of ways to find game stores in your area, it does very little to tell you about the real character of those stores: their atmosphere, their product, their staff, or anything else a curious gamer might want to know. To help others out, I've started a week-by-week survey of the stores in my area, playing a Friday Night Magic at each one as a way of familiarizing myself with it.

Last week, I started talking about Dragon's Lair, its intimate atmosphere, and its dazzling array of comics and games. I ran out of time, but this week I'm finishing up with a description of its Friday Night Magic.

I was running late, but there was still time to sign up for the event. It took the last $5 of cash I had on-hand and I forgot my DCI number, but the staff offered to look up my number and answered all of my questions about the timing, the seats, and how things were generally organized.

Round 1
I was placed opposite a guy named Josh, because it's always a Josh. He had a ramp deck that put lands into play faster than I could, so he dropped massive titans onto the board before I could  respond to them. I managed to push him back with a Rolling Tremblor after landing my first mountain on turn six or so. But it only lasted for a turn, and after that turn he attacked hard enough to kill me. I stabilized once in the second game, bringing enough vampires out to threaten him, but I was met with a Black Sun's Zenith, a nice bit of removal that swept my little dudes from the skies.

For the toughest stains.

Josh was nice and polite. Our two games ended before the time limit for the round was up so we got to talk a bit. He was proud of all the money that he and his friends put into their decks. He said that he was sorry that he was my first opponent for a FNM, as he considered himself one of the better of the regular players. 

It's the Magic: Standard Tour of San Antonio - Dragon's Lair

Just moved up to San Antonio from Louisiana a few weeks ago. The place I lived didn't have any game stores, so having not just one, but three game stores within driving distance of my house is a whole new experience.

While the internet is full of ways to find game stores in your area, it does very little to tell you about the real character of those stores: their atmosphere, their product, their staff, or anything else a curious gamer might want to know. To help others out, I've started a week-by-week survey of the stores in my area, playing a Friday Night Magic at each one as a way of familiarizing myself with it.

At 7959 Fredericksburg Road, you can find the Dragon's Lair. It's a great place for both comics and gaming. Better yet, it's in the same shopping center as an Einstein Bros Bagels. 

I know; it sounds perfect.

Touchback

Skiltao said somethings a while back and I never got back with him. His comment got stuck  in the comments tab where I didn't notice it. Even after I did, it took a while to get around to framing a response to it. It was pretty crappy of me to miss it, then to take so long to get back.

I'm intermittently rewatching "The Pretender" with my sister, and I quite like that show. Four seasons and two TV movies, though.

Someone else was telling me about that too. It looks good and I'm tentatively putting it in my queue after the review series after There Will Be Brawl.

BUT! VHS'd commercials on my copies of Pretender pointed me to a show called "DarkSkies." Only lasted one season, and it does for Cold War UFO paranoia what There Will Be Brawl does for Nintendo.

I'll be honest, I've watched enough Cold Case that I have to suppress an urge to dragon punch any screen trying to show me a period piece television show. It's even spoiled Quantum Leap for me. Maybe...in time...I can come to watch it, but sadly that time is not now.

As a quick aside Cold Case is the worst television show ever created. The Gary Coleman Show had a more supportable premise, more likeable characters, and a less aggressively distasteful premise.

There Will Be Brawl, Episode Two: The Lost

With the major players introduced in Episode 1, The Lost focuses on forwarding the plot and giving a bit more attention to the supporting cast. While it still teases a lot of the history and peripheral figures, it does--as any early episode should--a good job of putting forward slightly more questions than answers.

Least Favorite Part: Wow, Link is terrible. His acting, casting, dialog. I'm just not sold on him at all. Who I am sold on is Kirby. Despite the all-too-literal Silence of the Lambs scene, his appearance here really did work. His voice is creepy. His puppet is the right level of departure from the adorable Kirby we're familiar with, making it just as gritty (yeah, I'm getting ready to bandy that word around each time I talk TWBB) as the rest of the setting.

There Will Be Brawl, Episode One: Twilight Ruin

A few weeks ago, Skiltao suggested I watch the "There Will Be Brawl" web series. I did. I once thought that the only way to add this much insanity to my life this quickly was to start making friends with women. I'm pretty sure the only way to make it this enjoyable would be to have sex in front of them.

Field Manual Kris: What's Getting Written

I'll level with you guys; I'm a bit burnt out. Having problems with the internet at work is a convenient excuse, but even before NaNoWriMo, my ability to sustain this blog the way I have just isn't there. I've taken a couple of emotional blows lately and I'm getting to the end of this streak where I just pretend that I'm going to get back to school and getting around to where I forsake it forever until I'm an obnoxious fifty-year old or I just go back and finish the fight. I'll keep putting stuff out, but it'll probably be MWF for a while until I get a better long-term plan going.

Everything after this is incoherent rambling.

I'm reading Robert E. Howard, which is a trip. He wrote the series of short stories that becomes the Conan the Barbarian mythos (Yes, he apparenlty knew Lovecraft, now fuck off about that forever unless you can--right now--give me detailed reviews of five Lovecraft works and why they're relevant beyond being a mechanism to relieve hipster nerds from their money. In fact, fuck off about Lovecraft altogether unless you can do that.). I think Conan is pretty fundamental geek reading, and I've actually picked up a collection of Howard's Conan works, along Asimov's Foundation, LeGuin's, A Wizard of Earthsea, and Hadleman's Forever War, because fuck it, my next series of reviews will aquaint me (and thusly, you) with the fundamentals of nerd literature.

It's not right that I don't do a full ten, and to that end I'm also eyeing Ender's Game, Downbelow Station, Dragonlance (yes, that dragonlance) and 2001.Also considering a quick reread of A Fire Upon The Deep, because hive-mind wolf packs are awesome.

Yes, by the end, I may even be permitted to talk about Lovecraft (though it's not bloodly likely).

Oh, right, but I was talking about how Robert Howard's work was trippy. Not a pyschodelic, jump-dolphins-ate-the-script-so-make-something-up-last-Episode-of-The-Prisoner trippy, but just strange to read about and to read. According to a number of people Howard is a great writer. His work is "highly charged" and "fast and furious and girm". Ignoring quotes from the cover of his collected works, it has at the very least stood the test of time. However, upon reading "The Phoenix on the Sword," "The Frost-Giant's Daughter," "The God in the Bowl," "The Tower of the Elephant," and "The Scarlet Citadel," I have noticed several things about Howard's Conan stories.

I That shit is economical. Seriously, "The Phoenix on the Sword" uses broad charicatures to give us all six antagonists in two pages. There's a side story about a ring; that shit totally pays off. It seems contrived, but then there's not too much room for being cutesy and sparse with your Checkov's Guns.

II Conan does not impress me much. He's great at killing. Alright, he's bad-ass at killing, but he's just sort of 'meh' at everything else. Somehow, I expected more. But I'll admit that his less-than-badass qualities do make him a more grounded character.

III A magical guy will solve everything. This is pretty common.

IV These villains certainly like to exposit. I mean, they tell you what's going on, but they might as well have a sign up when they're telling you.

V That magical guy was a dream...or was he? He wasn't.

VI Don't be black, fat, or even a little gay. Seriously.

VII Wizards are assholes. Always. Even the good ones are 50% scary and 100% asshole.

VIII There is a well-formed universe here and its heavens are populated by some freaky shit. If you read this before learning Lovecraft and Howard were contemporaries, the subsequent revelation of that fact will not faze you in the slightest.

IX Conan is awesome, but far from omnipotent. He gets his ass kicked sometimes. At very specific times. See point number II.

X Yeah, it's pretty good.

It's especially good because what I'm doing for National Novel Writing Month is creating a series of short stories with similar characters that develops over time. If I aim larger, will get bogged down with trying to connect everything and keep it going, I'd much rather work on making each event I want to cover into something self contained. It reduces my perfectionist overhead while still succeeding at making the pieces of a larger story that I can edit into something more cohesive later. Of course, with the Conan stories actually being economically told short stories that are part of a larger connected universe, it's very helpful for me to look at Howard as a model to see how he does it, even if "how he does it" consists of Exposition, one line to describe a character, exposition, character openly says his motivations, fighting, bad guy dies.

I'll add the magical dudes in post.

The Next Reviews

I do The Prisoner reviews, because I want to let people know if a cultural artifact is worth checking out. I botched The Prisoner reviews (big time), but I learned a lot, which is a secondary goal here. I’ll do some broader commentary on The Prisoner once I figure out how to review the last episode, which won’t be for another month or so (sorry). After that, I’ll probably be picking up some other sub-cultural artifact to review on a weekly regular semi-regular basis. 

While it’s taken me over six months to review The Prisoner, I’d like my next project to be weekly feature that I could finish in less time than that. I could review anything, book series, webseries, comic books, TV show, movies, video game, etc., as long as whatever I could partake could give me something different to write about each week.

Why, reviews

I tend not to do reviews. I don’t like them. Any idiot can watch some cultural detritus and slam on a keyboard until they feel their gut responses are reflected on the page. The current era of political mouthpieces consists of blogger-quality reviewers with a small staff to editorialize their feelings into something suitable for a 24 Hour Hate that’s either much-improved or much-worsened by the commercial breaks.

But hey, let’s face it, putting out a blog five (or three. or whatever) times a week gets tricky. If I can go on a tear and pump out a massive document, I can post it in bite-sized chunks for a few weeks to come. I’m not milking it; no one wants to commit more than five minutes to anything on the internet. That’s why webcomics, You Tube, LOLcats, and short stories are the media of the internet and not novels or movies.

Penny Reviews: The Reboot

Justice League International #1

Booster Gold, Guy Gardener, Batman (of course Batman) and an unhealthy level of nostalgia for the previous JLI prompted me to try the new one. The team's foundation is vague, but hopefully it'll be revisited and some of the Chinese and Russian stereotypes will simmer down. It's not explained what The Hall of Justice's history is that makes it so contentious, but that's the forth central conflict the issue presents while still cracking jokes, introducing the cast, and doing everything else a first issue should do, including addressing potential fan outrage. It's just good comics and fits the reboot. B-

Cap Week: @#&^ Yeah, Captain America

Ye gods, yes fun. I mentioned the characters with only a few lines of dialog; those lines of dialog are packed with (admittedly simple) character and add a lot to the enjoyment of the movie. I’ve heard tell that there might be some flashbacks in a sequel. While I’m not a big fan of Cap as a solo act, the possibility of more multinational, multiethnic platoon of badasses does this fanboy thing where I completely forget that they’re essentially going to be potato chip content stretched to fill in the gaps of the terrible idea this is Captain America solo adventures.

Cap Week: The Main Event

The first thing I want to say about CA:tFA is that while I know it’s about a super-soldier bombarded with vita-rays who uses his indestructible shield to fight a super-Nazi with superpowers over a cube of infinite energy that fell out of Odin’s trophy room and who ends up harmlessly frozen in ice in the North Atlantic for seventy years, but…