Blaargh, I harbour a virulent plague. Not terribly conducive for comic drawing, but should probably get it done by Saturday; made some decent progress since waking up at about 4:30 this morning.
Carved a bloody swathe through Ancient Greece, turning every creature that crossed my path into mythological mincemeat. Then I played Gears of War, where I got to gun hordes of alien filth to the ground and then kick its skull in with my massive armoured boot.
This week I’ve been playing Viva Piñata. That technicolour sugar rush of a game involving the farming of animate papier-mâché constructs, on Xbox 360.
Let’s not muck about; it’s totally a kids’ game. The bright colours and happy noises, the characters and indeed the premise itself, all of the presentation seems aimed at preschoolers. But I have a hard time believing a kid of an age to enjoy the aesthetics could cope with the gameplay, cuz it gets pretty complex as you progress. Sure it’s straightforward enough at the start. One carrot will nab you a Bunnycomb. A turnip begets a Mousemallow.
But having to evolve Sparrowmints into Candaries, breeding them on a diet of Yellow Flutterscotches (which need to be evolved from White Flutterscotches by feeding them buttercups) to raise a prey stock of sufficient size to feed an entire flock of Buzzenges (which require Pudgeons and even more Sparrowmints to breed), all to convince one Buzzenge-eating Eaglair to take up residence in your garden …And then do it all again to get a breeding pair… seems a little out of the league of kids in the demographic of the tie-in Saturday morning cartoon.
So, sorta deep, in its way. And damned if it ain’t compelling. Even when talked by my brother into taking a break to play some Gears, while eviscerating an enemy in a shower of gore with a chainsaw bayonet, I found myself thinking how many Bunnycombs I need to breed to aquire a couple of Pretztails… I don’t often play such open-ended sandbox games. I generally prefer more goal oriented games. But each new species that appears in the wilds is intensely desirable, a thing that must be aquired at all costs, as though the Piñatas’ colourful shells were stuffed with crack cocaine instead of sweets.
Holy shit it’s a Fizzlybear! I need some fuckin honey! WHERE THE HELL ARE MY BUZZLEGUMS?!
…I have to go
Sorry to hijack the first post V, but this needs attention.
Someone on our forum’s pointed out a section of the game “Furcadia” to us on our forums, basically someone has created the Mobian Inquisition HQ in the game…and is claiming to be Lothar’s wife, along with people parading around Virus, Lothar, Eastwood, and Rogue avatars. Pictures of the HQ in the game can be seen here.
This is CREEPY. VERY CREEPY. This fan, Knuckles6K and I have had words about her stalker-ish tendencies before…she has claimed to be a close friend of me before and my characters “wife” as well. It seems that those private warnings fell on deaf ears…so let’s see if she can ignore them when it’s posted on the front page of the site.
I mean it’s great that we have devoted fans…but this is just overboard and I actually feel incredibly uncomfortable by this. I mean what the hell am I supposed to think? Should I be flattered that this random girl is making these claims and seems to ignore our bloody copyright? I am seriously considering contacting Furcadia about this to see what their rules about copyright infringement are. It might have helped K6K’s case if we were informed of this by her or were asked, but NO! She just does this in secret to what end? Apparently to have sex with people in the game. That, to me, is all kinds of fucked up, especially considering I am only just learning about this now.
So, K6K, you are creepy. If this hurts your feelings, good. You not only ignored my initial comments on your activities, but then went behind my back to fufill your screwed up fantasies. But your brought this on yourself by ignoring my private warnings before. Now it’s out in the open, let’s see how you deal with it.
(You probably know the drill by now. Though it should actually get finished Friday afternoon/evening. I’m pretty far along with it this week, just ran out of time, and (once again) have work Friday morning, dammit. It’s finished.
Here’s a wallpaper of panel 3 from last week’s comic. Just cuz I thought it was cool. – Virus)
Lothar-
So last Friday I went with my good friend Drew to the first showing of Spider-Man 3. I used to like Spider-Man comics and I quite like the movies, #2 being a personal favourite. I’ve had a week to think about it and I think I’m ready to go into a little bit of detail on my thoughts on the film. THERE WILL BE SPOILERS!
The Good.
I liked the film up until a certain point, but more on that later. Sure there were some silly moments, such as Peter disco dancing down the street, and a lot of people were moaning about that and how out of character and off the wall it was. But to me that was the entire point of the scene, its Peter changing because of the contact with the symbiote and scenes like this show how his attitude is changing for the worse.
I also liked Thomas Hayden Church’s portrayal of the Sandman, and it’s nice to see a villain who isn’t a complete cunt, or doing it to feed his ego. He’s stealing money to try and save his daughter and he’s regretful of his actions through the entire film, but is constantly deciding to do the wrong thing for the right reasons.
Harry coming to terms with his father’s legacy is also very well done, but leaves something to be desired mostly because the filmmakers have to rush it.
I also liked Venom (, not Eddie Brock, but more on that soon), and he was portrayed pretty much as I expected. He’s the opposite of Spider-Man, evil, vicious, totally without morals and incredibly dangerous. My one regret is that he didn’t say “I’m going to eat your brains!” or something to that affect.
The Bad
While I liked the Sandman, can somebody PLEASE explain to me why every single villain Peter faces has to be linked to him somehow in these films? Okay, Green Goblin was a given since he’s always been his best friends father and you can’t exactly have Venom without him being connected to Spidey. I could swallow the tenuous link between Peter and Doctor Octopus, but did we really have to have Sandman be Uncle Ben’s actual killer? He couldn’t just be some guy could he? The only reason he’s in the film is so Peter can angst about it and eventually, forgive him for killing Uncle Ben (it was an accident and Sandman regrets it)…but this just bloody destroys the reason Peter became Spider-Man in the first place. Oh sure “great power, great responsibility” and all that but the reason Peter became Spider-Man is that he’s wracked with guilt over his actions that led to Ben’s death. If he forgives the Sandman, he’s not wracked with guilt and doesn’t have a fucking reason to be Spider-Man anymore!
Angst, angst, angst, relationship problems, and more angst.
Three stories for one movie is far too many. I think #3 would have benefited more from focusing on either the Venom story, or the whole Sandman/New Goblin thing, leaving the one left over for the fourth movie. Everything seems so rushed in this, they have to have Harry attack Pete, lose his memory, get it back, go angsty, and then forgive Pete once he learns the truth alongside with the whole Venom and Sandman thing. Despite the movie being three hours long there simply isn’t enough time to devote enough screen time to each story and have them feel truly fleshed out.
And why the fuck does Peter show his bloody face to EVERYONE in this movie again. Didn’t he get enough of that in #2?
The Ugly
Eddie Brock gets completed shafted in this movie. He’s on screen a total of fifteen to twenty minutes before he becomes Venom, and quite frankly he has very little in the way of motivation to want to kill him. Peter reveals that Brock’s photo is a sham, and Brock say’s because of Peter he’ll never work for a newspaper again. Then a little later he sees Peter walking with his girlfriend, Gwen Stacy. However, I don’t think even Gwen knew they were dating so meh. This is ALL the motivation he gets for wanting Peter Parker dead, going so far to actually pray for God to kill him. Seriously, what the fucking hell? Perhaps if we got one or two more scenes showing how utterly down the toilet Brock’s life had gone, such as him getting kicked out of his apartment due to no money, or not being able to get hired, it would have made more sense. But no, Peter loses him his job and suddenly he wants God to kill him. It just doesn’t add up and quite frankly it doesn’t factor in that Brock may be unstable before it happens because we get no indication of that either.
The last half-hour of the film completely and utterly fell apart. They try and bring three separate stories together in one climatic battle and it just feels so utterly rushed that it comes off wrong. Because they had to tie up three stories none of them get a really satisfactory conclusion because just after you need to get over Venom’s death, you have to deal with Peter forgiving Sandman, and then deal with Harry dying. You don’t get any time to reflect on either conclusion at all before they have Peter and Mary Jane reconcile and the credits roll. I actually left the theatre disappointed at how unsatisfying and rushed the ending was. I think they just decided to end the movie early because the audience would be busting for a piss at the 3 hour mark (not me, I went during the Harry and MJ kiss scene since it was so predictable I knew what would happen).
Oh and why exactly did Sandman want Spider-Man dead? He stopped him taking some money sure, but he could have easily gotten more so it really doesn’t add up why he would join up with Venom to kill Spider-Man.
But overall I enjoyed the movie. The action scenes were, as always, great fun but I feel it is the weakest movie in the franchise. I just wonder what they’re gonna do with #4 because I’m sure as hell sick of MJ and Peter having angsty relationship problems already. Look, when ever you two have problems either have sex or kill each other. Either scenario would be more entertaining than watching MJ cry for the 50th time.
Mmyep. Might be worth actually changing the update day to Saturday. Except then we might start getting Sunday updates, so let’s not. Still, hopefully this’n should be worth the wait – I’ve been giggling just drawing it.
Oh hey, I just noticed it’s May the Fourth. Being as Britain is quite a secular nation, and when pushed most people will write ‘Jedi’, then the Force be with you, good readers. Stay Light Side.
Tried to draw on my day off on Wednesday, largely failed – just weren’t happening, couldn’t get the frame of mind. Ended up playing some Gears of War and watching the rest of Fullmetal Alchemist instead. So kind of a bust, but an enjoyable day off. FMA FTW. Now I have to find some way to get ahold of the movie though, cuz gorram, unsatisfactory series end. Work seems to enjoy conflicting with my update schedule as much as it possibly can (“What, you like to work on a comic Thursday afternoon? Well you can’t, you have a shift then. What, you like to stay up late Thursday night working on it? Nope, you’re in early Friday morning, sucks to be you.”), so off to bed I go, should be done by Saturday.
Edit: And there we go.
I was originally going to post my initial impressions of God of War 2 here, but because some idiot at my work’s head office lacks the mental capacity to SHIP THE FUCKING GAMES OUT, it won’t arrive till today (Friday) whereas they usually get in a day or two early. Bastard.
I usually listen to my MP3 player in the car but sometimes I stick the radio on. If I do I usually listen to Century FM because it plays a half-decent mix. I would listen to BBC Radio Two or Four but since it’s my mum’s car she hasn’t got those tuned in.
Anyway, there was a current events roundtable discussion show on, and they were talking about the shootings in Virginia this week. The usual stuff, how appalling it is, gun control issues and the like. Their next topic though, was about MP3 players.
Now, this is a current affairs program, and two out of the three people presenting it had NO IDEA what a fucking MP3 player was or how they worked. If this is current affairs why were they talking about a subject that most people started accepting as normal part of life as som,ething that’s only just happened? I mean Jesus, it was like being back in 2002, or further.
Now take into mind, these are the same people who were discussing the current Virginia issue and it makes me wonder how the fuck they can be so out-of-date on one of their topics. It baffles me honestly. And it just shows how they really shouldn’t be talking about Virginia if they have no idea what the hell an iPod is, which you see every bloody day. I mean I’d expect these people to be clued up about everything they discuss. They’re on the BBC for fuck’s sake, it’s meant to INFORM people, not flout their own inability to move with the times. I suppose you could argue that by having this discussion, they’re educating their audience who are also confused about these things, but I’m bloody sure they could use the air time to discuss something with a bit more importance.
Journalistic integrity? More like journalistic ignorance.
Meh, once again, I have nothing to say here. I like how this strip turned out though. ‘Specially Jamilla on the screens. Check the foreshortening, yo. See, the hologram communicator usually projects a 3D image of the users at either end. Simmons there, you could potentially walk around the table and see the back of his head (don’t ask me how such technology works). But Jamilla is transmitting via an ordinary low-tech video camera, so it becomes a 2D image, projected on a virtual flat screen.
Ayup
Who the hell is ‘Flake Dipped’ trying to fool? Isn’t a Flake with a chocolate coating just a big Twirl?
