Just another nerd.
Okay, maybe I will actually stop playing WoW at some point after all. Like maybe Spring 2009 when Cryptic is currently projecting it will launch Champions Online. Hell. Yes.
Somewhere in my basement I’ve got a 1st edition copy of the original Champions from 1981. I forced my grandparents to drive 60 miles to the only decent comic book/game store just so I could nab a copy the day it finally arrived in stock. What an amazing game that was/is.
Pat pointed me to this Flickr set of some awesome Justice League steampunk cosplay. I’d love to see what these folks could do with a steampunk Avengers set.
ZOMG Power Girl:
The Swamp Thing series that ran on USA Networks from 1990-1993 has finally been released on DVD. Note that even though the title is “Swamp Thing: The Series”, this is actually only the first two seasons. I was always a fan of the show, but then again I regularly re-watch Lidsville, so YMMV.
Comic Rack is free software that is hands-down the best comic book reader software for Windows. As the screenshot below demonstrates, the program has a nice iTunes-like interface for organizing comic book files (.cbr, .cbz, PDF), as well as having a client-server mode that works fairly well.
TheComicBooks.Com has the complete transcription of EC Comics publisher William Gaines’ 1954 testimony to a Senate subcommittee investigating juvenile delinquency.
I especially love this exchange between Gaines and the subcommittee’s chief counsel, Herbert Beaser:
Mr. BEASER. You said that you had a circulation of 5 million Bible storybooks.
Mr. GAINES. Yes.
Mr. BEASER. How many years is this?
Mr. GAINES. Twelve years, since 1942.
Mr. BEASER. In other words, in little over 3½ months you sell more of your crime and horror than, you sell of the Bible stories?
Mr. GAINES. Quite a bit more.
Of course Gaines never published anything quite as horrific as some of the more graphic scenes in the Bible. Perhaps if he had turned his artists toward an illustrated version of Deuteronomy 20:16-17 . . .
CNET continues its woeful and error-filled coverage of all-things comics with its latest story about forthcoming straight-to-DVD animated movies from DC. Following on Marvel’s success with animated Avengers and Iron Man movies, DC is getting into the game by producing its own straight-to-DVD releases.
According to CNET’s Neha Tiwari,
Batman and Superman are no strangers to the big screen, but their animated counterparts have yet to step in the limelight. This September, comic-giant DC Comics will be changing its path by releasing its first animated movie, Superman Doomsday, based on the 1993 storyline involving the man of steel.
Well yeah, I guess . . . as long as you completely ignore theatrical releases of DC properties such as 1993s animated Batman: Mask of the Phantasm or the much better Return of the Joker (especially the not-really-appropriate-for-kids uncut version).
Ah, but this is the same CNET that a couple years ago lamented that no comics company had released their back catalogs on CD or DVD, despite the fact that at the time Marvel had released several DVD-based compilations of thousands of digitized comics of several of its properties.
I guess CNET must block Google so the editors and reporters are unable to do any fact checking on this sort of stuff.