Reviews

X-Men Vs ... Vampires?

2010-07-07T21:24:30Z

This week's X-Men #1 is the first Adjective-less X-Men #1 in 20 years. Not since Chris Claremont & Jim Lee teamed to launch one of the highest printed #1's in the history of comics has there been an "X-Men #1" ... is that a big deal? I'm not entirely sure. This launch certainly does not carry the name recognition that the last "X-Men #1" did but that doesn't mean that it isn't good. Probably best known for his crime novels Victor Gischler turns in an interesting story about terrorist cell vampires and their desire to spread the disease of vampirism. Artist Paco Medina, perhaps most widely known for his work on the debut story arc of the current Deadpool ongoing series, churns out some really fun artwork that at times saunters up to really great but most of the time stays in the realm of solidly good. The story is the next in a long line of big X-Men status changing events/banners. The strangest part about the event though is that it doesn't seem to bear any connection to the event that just ended. I'm not bashing on the story that just finished, X-Men: Second Coming, or on this new "Curse of the Mutants" banner but it just seems like a bit of a disconnect.

The story itself drew me in and I felt like it will be the kind of story that I'd like to check in on the second issue for but at the same time there is this nagging voice in the back of my mind saying, "Wasn't the Dracula story that Paul Cornell was telling in Captain Britain & MI:13 awesome! Why did that series get cancelled?" in addition to the perhaps worrisome idea that Marvel is just trying to cash in a little bit on the recent bump in popularity that Vampires have been experiencing (there was a really interesting discussion that when Republicans are in the White House that Zombies become more popular and that when Democrats are in the White House that Vampires receive the same kind of popularity bump but that whole conversation is better saved for another time). Like I said, Gischler's tale is an interesting one and it has a different kind of take on Vampires than I've seen recently but at the same time plastering "X-Men Vs Vampires" all over everything just sort of sits funny with me.

I guess it wouldn't be so bad had I not seen the announcement on Newsarama that Marvel is going to be doing "Vampire Variant Covers" this October.

On the other front in the pages of Uncanny X-Men we've got Matt Fraction continuing on with the threads laid down by Second Coming. "Five Lights" will kick off in Uncanny #526 and will introduce new characters as well as be penciled by Whilce Portacio who was an X-Men of similar popularity to Jim Lee back when the last X-Men #1 came out.

Perhaps this isn't a coincidence.

Perhaps it's time to look back at the 90's and think more fondly about the kind of expansionist "Everyone must read comics!" kind of mentality that was ever so prevalent back then. We're trying to get comics in front of more eyes with digital comics (like them or not) and we've got a brand new X-Men #1 ... with 8 covers ...

And strange as it might sound, it might not even be a bad thing. Only time can tell.

Cthulhu Dice Fails to Drive them Mad

2010-04-12T19:50:29Z

It's been a while since I have played a game that I just plain didn't like. Unfortunately this happened last night, and perhaps even more surprising it was a game from Steve Jackson Games ... that involved Cthulhu. I'm as big a fan of Cthulhu as the next raving lunatic and I normally glom onto the goings on of the Elder One himself. But this game is just plain bad. It's far too simple and seems to rejoice in that simplicity but aside from use as a quick game that determines which player goes first in another game I can't see how the game is really even worth it's low, low $4.99 price tag.

The game plays quite quickly with each player having three sanity tokens and the final player with remaining sanity wins the game. Each round a player picks a "victim" and rolls the die against them and will affect their sanity in a few different ways and then the victim attacks the predator and the die passes to the predator's left. The game is just not in any way complex and really falls flat in both it's concept and it's presentation. The game contains one twelve-sided die, about 18 or so green glass counters so that you can play with 6 players, and a rules pamphlet; and that's all. I really have enjoyed a great deal of the games that I have played recently from Steve Jackson Games, namely among them Chez Cthulhu, but this is really just a sub par performance.

I could even be more petty and say that the name is misleading as it only contains one die, and thus should be called Cthulhu Die but I can see where that would be a bit of a strange name when it gets down to brass tacks.

Atlas Games Does it Again With Ren Faire

2010-02-15T02:19:01Z

It came time to review another game for our monthly product meetings and there just happened to be a new game on the shelves that had caught my attention from a publisher of which I have always been fond. Atlas Games has a really good track record of great games in the the Board Game [Seismic] and Role Playing Game [Feng Shui & Nyambe] varieties, but their major releases have almost always been in the card game field, games like Lunch Money, Let's Kill, Gloom, Dungeoneer, Once Upon a Time, as well as others. And their most recent release is another in a long line of really fun games that can make for a really great experience for casual gaming situations and party scenarios. The game only plays up to 4 players which I see as the only real stumbling block from it becoming the kind of game that Lunch Money has become.

Ren Faire is a game by first time designer Michelle Nephew and she approaches mechanics and fun like a seasoned pro. The game is quite simple but yet really fun as it combines the kind of silliness that one has come to expect from an Atlas Game but at the same time has a sort of system of gratification as you accumulate parts of your costume. The premise of the game is that you want to be the first to have a complete costume (though it need not look good together or even make any sense). The best way to get pieces for your costume is to earn cash and the only way to do that is to complete silly little tasks that vary from flipping cards to belly dancing to jumping up and down for a few turns or even speaking in a particular accent for a while.

The game has an instant beer and pretzel appeal, which these days means that it has a great deal of replay value (because who wants to break out a new game when you've already got one out and have already played a round of it). I think that the game is probably the most fun with 3-4 players because it makes some of the tasks more daunting in someways and more entertaining in others.

This is the perfect kind of game to get your SCA (Society of Creative Anachronisms) friends to gather round the table and in no time they'll be shouting "Long Live the Queen!"

I Wish Every Night Was The Last Night On Earth

2009-12-27T17:27:23Z

The guys and gals behind Flying Frog's Last Night on Earth have had a bonafied hit on their hands ever since the game hit the shelves. The game was one of the fastest sell-outs in recent memory and was one of the most impressive first efforts from any young gaming company in the history of the game renaissance. Many people may be wondering what the fuss is all about and maybe even some of them with good reason. The game might seem a whole lot like other Zombie Apocalypse games on the market but it is most assuredly different and in a whole lot of fun ways. The game accommodates up to 6 players and is played in a team situation. In the 6 player game 4 players play as survivors trying to accomplish a series of goals in a limited number of turns and the other 2 players play as the zombie hordes (in smaller games there is only one player representing the zombie hordes). The game is a combination of character abilities that differentiate the survivors, equipment that can be acquired from searching buildings, and action or event cards that the characters also acquire by searching the buildings. The zombie players have a never ending supply of zombies and a smaller hand of "Zombie Event" cards that are refilled every turn on their side.

The real charm of the game is the kind of open competition going on between the survivor players and the zombie player(s), the special camaraderie that develops between the survivor players, and the overall uniqueness of the scenarios that the game provides. In the basic box there are 5 different scenarios (Defend the Manor House, Die Zombies, Die, Save the Townsfolk, Burn 'Em Out, and Escape in the Truck) and each one provides a different kind of experience for both the heroes and the zombies. As well the whole board is modular creating a different feel for each game as the buildings that surround the center of town (or the manor house) change with each variation. The benefit of this game as well is the overall production quality. For your $49.95 you're getting some really incredible components, great cardstock for the cards great cardboard for the board pieces as well as really good looking miniatures round out an incredible product from a small company that has everyone noticing.

In addition to the dynamic base game there is also the Growing Hunger expansion that adds more cards to the variety as well as additional scenarios. On the horizon for Flying Frog is also the Hero Pack 1 which will add more characters into the mix for the survivor team as well as a few new cards oriented toward these characters and an additional scenario. Another expansion growing ever nearer is Survival of the Fittest expansion which will add more scenarios as well as three new decks of cards to the game: Unique Items (which will add new items for the survivors to utilize), Survival Tactics (tactical decisions that are made by the characters to better aid their survival through the night), and Grave Weapons (weapons for the zombies as they rise from the dead). Also there are additional scenarios available through the Flying Frog Games website. All in all I think this is the kind of game that can bring seasoned gamers a great deal of tactical entertainment and bring new gamers to the table with great looking pieces and really fun mechanics.

X-Factor: Best Book of the Year?

2009-12-24T18:55:47Z

A whole lot of hyperbole falls out of my mouth every single time it opens. It's not as though I don't really love the comics that I claim to or that I don't think they're every bit as awesome as I proclaim them to be ... it's just that when I think of comics I think in hyperbolic terms. I think that most of us do really. I think that when we love a character, we LOVE a character. And when we hate a series we LOATHE it. But every now and again we have the chance to think about things in a more serious mindset and we actually figure out intellectually what makes us enjoy a series aside from the gut feel of love. Over the last year X-Factor has released either 14 or 15 issues and for the first full year in a very long time it has been completely unhindered by the "Event Machine" going on at Marvel. There is something about when Peter David is allowed to tell his story unfettered that makes it a certain sort of magical and having a full year of that kind of magic that has made it more memorable and amazing than a lot of other comics on the market in recent years. This was also a year of a few big issues for X-Factor as it reached #50 of the current series and #200 of the legacy numbering for the series. But it isn't about the milestones, at least not for X-Factor. And it's most certainly not about the impact that it's having on the rest of the Marvel Universe. It's about the moments between characters throughout the last year that have been amazing, heart breaking, heart warming, terrifying, and simple. It's been about the maturation of the relationships between the characters and watching Monet and Theresa become best friends. It's been about watching the addition of Longshot and Darwin to the cast and how that has changed the dynamic. It's been about watching the two closest characters, Madrox and Guido, grow apart the way truly close friends do from time to time. It's been about the return of incredible characters and the creation of even more incredible scenes. As I look back on 2009 I begin to realize that perhaps the best book of the year wasn't any of the top sellers and wasn't even the moments from the big events ... but the quiet book that did everything that it should be impossible to do with comics. That maybe, just maybe ... X-Factor was the best comic of 2009.

Ultimately it comes down to the amazing roller coaster ride that the last year has been for the characters, from the heights of Jamie and Theresa's child being born to the depths of what happened when Jamie held his son. It's about the issues that take place in the future as Jamie tries to save Mutantkind once again from the clutches of extinction at the hands of angry men. It's about the way that Longshot has become more than a mullet-ed three fingered alien and has become part of the X-Factor Family. It's about the kiss that twisted Rob Liefeld's guts. It's about the moments. This book is full of them. They make you laugh, they make you cringe, they make you rejoice, they make you cry, they make your pulse pound and your mind race. And behind it all is a writer that I had convinced myself for years that I didn't particularly care for: Peter David.

In a year where it has been about the event and the building toward the next event and zombies and political overthrow and multi-colored corps ... Peter David did all of this by explaining the beginnings of the story. By bringing to light the things that had been in the shadows of his ensemble superheroic noir piece in the midst of the mutantverse. He did it all by bringing it back to the basics. And he also did it by introducing a doddering old Doctor Doom who has delusions of grandeur in the future that made me laugh and laugh and laugh.

Peter David, I know you probably won't ever read this and even that being the case I wish to say thank you. To you and the artists that have worked on your book over the last year and who have brought more smiles to my face, more tears to my eyes, and more laughs from my lips than any other ongoing series of the year and doing all of it under the major radar and while never breaking the Diamond Top 10. Congratulations sir, you've wrapped up a 50 issue long arc (which might have been about 6 issues shorter if it hadn't been for Secret Invasion and Messiah Complex) and managed to leave enough untied threads to go on another 50 issues if not more. So here is to X-Factor, may 2010 be even better for you.

The Anchor Makes Plenty of Waves

2009-12-22T22:21:09Z

A whole lot of people know Phil Hester as a rather great penciller and a consummate professional of the industry we all know and love. More and more though he is becoming well known for his writing talents and for all the right reasons. His work on series like Black Terror and The Darkness have garnered him a whole lot of acclaim but in my experience is that his smaller and under-noticed titles are the ones that really set him apart as an innovative and incredible creator. His books like Antoine Sharp: The Atheist, The Wretch, The Coffin, Deep Sleeper, Golly!, and Firebreather (which is actually possibly going to become a cartoon on Cartoon Network or some nonsense) have caught and held my interest in ways unimaginable and sadly they are (in the cases of the mini-series) overlooked or (in the cases of the ongoings) infrequently published. But that doesn't seem to deter Phil one single second from creating amazing works that aren't necessarily in the greatest spotlight when it comes to the public.

All that preamble brings me to the book that I have come here to talk about today: The Anchor. Phil's new book from BOOM! Studios has a whole lot going for it and has been received incredibly well by both the critics and the readership. The series follows "Clem" the mysterious nigh invulnerable man who appears to fight off the monster that has appeared seemingly from no where to wreak havoc and destruction down on Iceland. The story goes on to explain that he is really fighting two wars on two fronts. The first in Hell where his soul fights back wave after wave of demons and the damned and remains impervious to damage as his earthly body suffers the pains of the damage inflicted. The second takes place on Earth when one of those demons slips past his defenses and makes it to our world. So while his Soul suffers no damage from his endless war in Hell his body randomly sprouts wounds as he does his best to beat back the creatures from the underworld. The series reveals that he has been at this for quite a long time and might well be the result of a monk's answered prayers from centuries ago.

The series is drawn by Brian Churilla who has worked on a few other monster intensive series like The Engineer and We Kill Monsters and his art has grown to a great extent here in this series and is reminiscent of the work of creators like Eric Powell, Mike Mignola, and Guy Davis and in all the good ways that one can be compared to those masters of the craft. The series is a great read and involves all the kind of stuff that fans of books like Hellboy, B.P.R.D., The Marquis, or any other of Hester's works will love.

Marian Churchland brings The Beast to Life

2009-12-01T23:48:57Z

I first became aware of Marian Churchland thanks to her work on one of my favorite comics currently being published, Elephantmen. Her incredible sense of softness and beauty conveys a love for the characters that she is depicting on the page be it Hippopotamus/Human hybrid, beautiful woman, strange old crone, ruthless mercenary, or creature of shadow and smoke. She also has a great capacity for story-telling with both her art and her words. This is her first Original Graphic Novel and it most assuredly deserves all of those words. It is an original story that takes a few cues and concepts from the classic story The Beauty and The Beast. It is graphically stunning and when you find out how few tools she used to create the art on the page you'll find yourself even more flabbergasted. And while it might be a relatively quick read it is certainly and heartfelt and enjoyable story.

Churchland's story centers around Collette, a young artist who has recently broken off a relationship with a boyfriend and who gets little work in her preferred medium, which is sculpture. Her father often gives her work that he can't fit into his schedule or whenever he hears about an opportunity to do some sculpture. The story starts with Collette meeting her father to go meet her new client, a gig that he has set up for her. She is going to be doing a portrait in marble, one of the greatest tasks a sculptor could ask for, but also a time intensive project that can make or break a career.

Collette finds herself having to spend an awful lot of time in the home of her client with only really the matron of the home who doesn't seem to be much of a maid or a cook (so what brings her to the home?), and the household's dog to spend her time with. The story is one of deep self introspection and substandard Earl Grey Tea. A story of desire to create and confusion about the future of one's life. A story of new acquaintances and betrayals by old friends. A story of lost love, procrastination, passion, ancient memories, family drama, poor plumbing, smoke and shadows, and one piece of rather old and rather incredible Italian Marble.

This book is the kind of book that people who like Fables, Black Hole, God Save The Queen, Therefore Repent, and other stories that combine personal story telling styles and some sort of otherworldly concepts as well as the work of artists and creators like J.M. DeMattias, Salgood Sam, Terry Moore, Moritat, Joe Kelly, John J. Muth, and Kent Williams.

And if you wind up checking out The Beast and liking it then I would also definitely check out the work she's done on Elephantmen which is collected in the trade paperback entitled "Damaged Goods" and if you like that then also check out the rest of Elephantmen, it's still one of my favorite books and it keeps introducing me to creators who are going to be making a whole lot of noise in the very near future ... next, I imagine, will be Chris Burnham.

Rio Grande Figures Out a Way to Bring Most All Gamers to the Table

2009-10-19T00:20:37Z

A game that I have been really impressed with lately has been Dominion. It's not only a really popular game with customers but it is also a really popular game with everyone who works at my store. Rio Grande is a great game as is indicated by it's current position (#6) on the Board Game Geek rankings.

The reason that I think that this game is so popular and so successful is that it has appeal factor to casual gamers, board game geeks, card game players, strategists and everything in between. There is the feel of a collectible card game to it without the kind of monetary investment that comes with most card games of it's complexity.

One of the things about this game that is so instantly brilliant is that it appeals to all kinds ofplayers because you can play it with any sort of approach. Players who love to play combo decks can find themselves any number of different combinations of cards to just run through play after play after play. Aggressive players can just buy up cheap cards super fast and get their victory points in a quantity of small bits as opposed to shooting the moon for the larger point cards. Defensive players can just fill their decks with cards to keep players off balance and to protect your hand at all times.

The game is brilliantly well balanced and has all kinds of variety right in the first box as there are plenty of different types of cards and each game only utilizes 10 of them. But what I think is best about the game is that the recent expansion brings a whole new kind of innovation and interesting concepts to the game. Introducing cards that, for the first time, contribute to the ongoing portion of the game and score victory points when the game concludes.

I really think that Rio Grande has a winner that adds a whole new realm of gaming to the tabletop and has a limitless potential for growth and variety.

Bucephalus Missteps in the Pit

2009-10-18T23:24:41Z

Plenty of Zombie ... a little lack of MoshIt came time to do my monthly review of a game for our Product Meeting which meant time to come home with a new game to play with Steff and Mike. As I have mentioned before Steff and Mike are not quite what one would call board game geeks but are certainly fans of board games, they love games like Boggle and Scrabble and word games of the like. Mike is a little more geeky adding to the mix an enjoyment of games like Carcassonne, Settlers of Catan, and Munchkin. It gives me a pretty good spread of gamers from which to draw a reaction.

Bucephalus has been a pretty big winner for me so far with games like Toboggans of Doom!, and Rorschach. I was kind of looking forward to playing Zombie Mosh! with my friends as they haven't yet played a game from Bucephalus and I was excited to see their reaction to the kind of sense of humor and incorporated gameplay that I had become used to with their games.

Sadly I think that Zombie Mosh! sort of falters. I think that the "Basic" setting is a little too basic and borders on painfully simple. Gone is the sense of humor as well, a game called Zombie Mosh! should have been rife with humor but aside from the names of the characters on the card (which in the basic game are all identical and thus seem pretty inconsequential) there was nothing that really stood out.

The game is played in rounds where each player is dealt a hand of 4 cards, each of which is two different body parts (Head, Left Leg, Left Arm, Right Leg, Right Arm) and can be used as an attack against another mosher or in defense of your own fragile decaying body. Also each player is dealt two cards against their mosher as attacks (which is to indicate the chaos of the pit). The first player uses two cards to attack or defend and then passes to the next player, the next player does the same until you reach the final player in clockwise order and that player uses all 4 cards and then each player takes turns in counter-clockwise order.

In the "Basic" version of the game each body part can take 3 points of damage before falling off. Players are eliminated when they lose three of their 5 body parts. Play continues until only one mosher remains. Ties are broken by fewest points of damage received.

The "Advanced" version of the game plays exactly the same but each zombie has 2 body parts with 4 damage capacity, 2 body parts with 3 damage capacity, and 1 body part with 2 damage capacity.

As per usual with Bucephalus the game pieces are rather good quality and everything feels sturdy and well put together. I certainly wouldn't say that based on the contents of the box that the price tag feels inappropriate.

The game plays relatively quickly and is not boring or complicated but it's just terribly simple. Plenty of simple games can be fun but it the ones that are usually bring something new to the table and unfortunately I just didn't really feel like Zombie Mosh! really didn't bring all that much to the table.

Vengeance of The Moon Knight ... is Surprisingly Good

2009-10-09T20:08:56Z

When I think of a character who has a checkered past when it comes to consistency of quality for their books there is no more clear an example than Moon Knight.

Quite simply the character is plagued with misrepresentations, mis-starts, and poor pacing ... at the best of times. At the worst of times creators are just too fascinated with the cult status of the character and get blinded by the big lights put on the launch of a new book with Marc Spector headlining.

The most recent launch started out promising with Novelist Charlie Huston and fan favorite artist David Finch taking an interesting look at the character who has suffered from so many retcons and relaunches and reimaginings that he understandably has developed something of a schizophrenic past ... so they embraced it all instead of choosing one concept. They made it so that all the relaunches and the derivations and reimaginings and ... everything ... was part of the broken mind of Marc Spector. And it had some people really excited, myself included ... but then schedules got in the way and the book started coming out more irregularly. And the book had sort of a slow pace to begin with and had it come out regularly it would have really probably worked.

But it didn't.

And that's most often the case.

But then Gregg Hurwitz and Jerome Opena came along and started rocking my world. Hurwitz is also a novelist but seems to have a really rock solid handle on the writing of comics that some novelists-turned-comic-writers seem to lack. He knows how to pace things to keep them interesting and he knows that being referential as well as reverential is key to success with the average comic nerd. Add to that the growing and evolving talent that is Jerome Opena and you've really got the potential for a best seller.

The first two issues have had the pacing down pat and have me hungry for more without feeling like I've been cheated out of my $3. The characters all seem human and interesting and ... great. The way that Hurwitz is dealing with the most recent runs and the recent depiction of the character is wholesale fascinating and the way that he has chosen to distance himself from the most recent run while still being married to the way the character has been fascinating as well. What's been really nice as well is that the characters in the book seem as hesitant about the future of Moon Knight as the reader is bound to be. A whole lot of statements akin to: "Yeah, you've said you're going to be stable and worth knowing many, many times in the past ... but I don't know if I'm going to let you sell me snake oil again." ... but allow me to assure you that if the first two issues are any indicator and if Hurwitz can keep his hands on Opena as the ongoing artist then things just might wind up being amazing ... for a long time to come.