Though, after rewatching the episodes of Justice League Unlimited contained in this box set, my over-whelming emotion was annoyance at being reminded how terribly ham-fisted the whole Cadmus storyline was. Which was, really, a weakness in the show from beginning to end. Individual episodes are superlative; the “big picture” through-story for the season was terrible. Even the generally better final season suffers from a lame deus ex machina cop-out of an ending.
So, I find it frankly hilarious that one of the more contentious and angst inducing gay news stories to surface recently is the shock and dismay that has been uttered at the stunning realization that in the video-game Bully, boys can kiss boys. Now, it’s not as if this is anything novel in games programming. Most of the “open ended” games that have come out, notably The Sims and Fable have included the option of having your character in the game be gay. Bully seems to have been specifically targeted by moralists, however, because the game’s publisher also makes the “controversial” Grand Theft Auto series of games, so naturally this all must be part of a plot to corrupt America’s holy and virginal youth. Reaction from people who have played the game is mixed, to say the least.
I must admit, I never thought of looking at the game twice until I heard about the boys kissing boys angle. And then, I realize that I don’t like Rockstar’s approach to games very much, and I move on. Besides, I still haven’t finished Justice League: Heroes or Kingdom Hearts, and I’d like to finish at least one of those before the new Legend of Zelda game comes out.
Oh, Roy Thomas, Danette Thomas and Ernie Colon, you’ve made me very happy.
The “World of Warcraft” community responds to South Park making fun of them in what, to all appearances, was a thirty minute commercial for “World of Warcraft.”
I dont play all the time…. I hadnt played sicne janauary reactivated this month…… Everyone I know tells me not to play… I watch a show like that… just reinforces it…… If nothing else I will take my money away from blizzard… that episode convinced me.
If anyone didn’t know that they were a loser 4 playing WoW b4 u watched this episode, then you baddly needed to see it and you should be very greatful for it.
hahaha after watching that fat dude pwn all those south park noobs it gave me the urge to go ganking. So i did and had a blast camping a shaman lowbie who was ganking in darkshire until a 60 mage came to help him, then i camped his body until he quit.
BAWHAHAHA
Gamers have been working hard to gain mainstream acceptance for gaming in general and for MMORPG gaming in particular for a while now. This sets us back quiet a bit; and it hurts to think that is how blizzard themselves view there ‘valued’ customers. I won’t stop playing, but it does leave a bitter taste in my mouth whenever I send in my $15.00.
Yeah man, South Park mades fun of the community.
It’s because the community sucks.
That said, one thing that did bother me, was that a certain group of players was unceremonoiusly crapped on, once again, by Blizzard’s PR machine. The Horde. Like the screenshots on the boxes from the original release the horde is under-represented or ignored all together. This episode will undoubtedly bring in tons of new players to the game, and naturally, they’re going to want to emulate the characters from this episode. Expect a slew of dwarves named Kartmun, and other such derivatives. With Blizzard focusing more on world pvp, where server demographics actually matter, unlike bgs, I think the Alliance is going to have their natural numbers (not every server but most) advantage vastly augmented.
you can’t take a joke
and are extremely pathetic
and youre a guildless nub
lolz
Luckily we have Australian tabloid television reporters to set us all straight on what an insidious menace this horrible game is.
Lots of probably unintended comedy there. I’ve never quite understood the heterosexual panic over infidelity. To pay attention to the mass media, you’d think that either every married man in America is a cheat, or else that many married women are paranoid to the point of distraction. Some of the signs that your husband might be gay strike me as a bit…odd. A strong preference for anal sex
Yes, because as we all know, only gay men have an interest in anal sex. Overreacts to anything concerning gay men — extreme homophobic behavior
Unusually high percentage of male friends who are gay
I’m kind of curious to know how these to go together. “Hey, honey, you know that disgusting god-damn faggot at work I told you about? We’re going to be working late tonight. And don’t forget, this weekend I’m going camping with that filthy perverted queer from my all-male gym and the shit-stabber I met at that bar you’re not allowed to ask me about.” Watching gay porn on the Internet
Answering personal ads on gay Web sites
Cell phone bills traced to gay escort services or gay personal dating services
Yeah…at this point you may as well just go ahead and add “Likes to have sex with men” to the signs that your husband might be gay…
So…the Mark Foley thing. I’m a bit worn out of the media fascination with closeted gay men at the moment, and more than a little frustrated at the lazy and homophobic “gay=pedophile” slant of the majority of the coverage. Think Progress has a nice summary of the wing-nut wings attempts to frame the debate as “gays are bad” instead of “corruption in politics and protecting sexual predators is bad.” John Walsh, of all people, even briefly addressed this.
There are aspects of the situation that I’m strongly in two minds about. Thinking back to my own sexually precocious teenage years, I have to say I have some skepticism regarding some of the “oh, those poor boys who don’t know how to turn off their instant messages and were exposed to this degeneracy completely and utterly against their will” hand-wringing. But that’s not really the issue, since the real story here should be Foley’s ethical misconduct in engaging in any kind of inappropriate behavior with a minor, and one he was in a position of authority over at that. Which is not to mention the cover-up. Or the cover-up of the cover-up, as Fox News now seems determined to rewrite history and make Foley a Democrat.
And, call me cynical if you must, but there’s a part of me that doubts that the story would have made it past the weekend if Foley were chatting inappropriately with seventeen year old girls.
Short Reviews
The second issue of Savage Brothers continues the comedy. Overall, it’s a good and entertaining comic. The writing by Cosby and Stokes is sharp and Albuquerque’s art is distinctive, attractive and complementary to the tone of the story. There’s a certain point, though, about half-way through the book, where you realize that the issue is going to be pretty much all schtick with a few scattered scenes of cartoony mayhem to punctuate the jokes. It’s not a bad approach to take with material like this, and it does fit the book, but the all-shtick approach can become wearying.
Second Wave #6 has a similar wearying effect. I still find the art and story enjoyable, but the slow pace of events is starting to become tiresome, especially with the speed that characters are dispatched and introduced. That the majority of the characters are, at this point, written in a broad and generalized fashion, rather than an indepth way, only accentuates the effect. Like Savage Brothers, it’s a stylistic approach that, for the most part, actually fits and works with the book, but there’s little feel of forward momentum and no indication that the storyline can be indefinitely sustained either.
Dorian Watches Television
I saw the first two episodes of Heroes. Overall, I liked it. There were a few rough patches here and there, but it’s already far ahead of…other sci-fi serial dramas in the fact that we’re only two episodes in and a) things have actually happened (as opposed to people standing around and talking about things happening), b) an actual plot is in motion, with multiple angles (as opposed to people standing around and waiting for the plot to happen) and c) there’s an actual time-line the characters are working under, namely the whole “five weeks before New York goes buh-bye” thing (and, as opposed to an interminable torturing of the audience as they wait patiently for the two or three things of actual import to happen at the 45 minute mark of each episode because the writers and producers are now quite clearly just making this shit up as they go along and have no plan to speak of).
No, I’m not planning on watching Lost this season, why do you ask?
Anyway…I did notice some grousing amongst the comicratti about their feeling that Heroes isn’t sufficiently different from actual comic book storylines. That, basically, they’ve seen all these tropes explored before. And, yes, these tropes have been explored before. In comic books. This isn’t a show for comic book fans. This is a show for everyone else.
The other new show I sampled and enjoyed was Showtimes Dexter, based on Jeff Lindsey’s novels about a serial killer working for the Miami police department. It’s definitely not a show for everyone, and it requires a certain mindset amenable to the darkest of dark comedy to really get into the show. There’s a strong satiric element, both in the inversion of the standard mystery structure to have the killer as the protagonist/investigator, but also of the entire genre of “heroic cop/clever forensics” that have come to dominate the American television detective novel. Instead of brave, relentless cops determined to track down every lead and bring righteous justice to the world, we’re given a police force so inept, corrupt and mired in politics that they can’t even recognize that they have a serial killer working amongst them.
Your Reward
To thank you for reading all that, here’s a picture of Bud Counts.
I love these threads when they pop up, with appalling regularity, on message boards. You can pretty much run down the usual list of “ways to lower prices” that are always offered. Increase the page count (because publishers would get a better deal per page that way…what?), lower the paper quality, increase the number of ads, pay artists and writers less, reduce staff at the publisher to lower over-head…
Lowering the paper quality is my personal favorite, because it completely ignores the fact that paper prices are actually fairly high across the board. And printing comics on lousy paper would have such a minimal effect on final price that it really isn’t worth considering. Especially when lower paper quality would more likely than not lead to readers complaining about the terrible paper quality.
Funnily enough, what I almost never see mentioned in these threads is that one of the reasons for “high” comic prices (and I put that in irony-quotes because it’s entirely possible that comics are actually priced too low to really be profitable in their current format, but no one really wants to have that conversation) is the very small audience for monthly pamphlet-format comics. You can charge more for a niche-market specialty item, because the intended audience is willing to pay the price.
I also find the notion that increased comic sales would lead to lower prices touchingly naive. Because, let’s face, if you can sell 100,000 units at $3 a pop, and then you increase demand so that next month you sell 200,000 units at $3 a pop, where’s the incentive to lower prices?
Because, you see, he’s once or twice had characters make jokes about some of the sillier tropes of the genre. Most of which actually made sense in the context of the story being told. But, you know, context and common sense are strangers in the lands of comic book message boards.
I can’t really extract any choice quotes because, honestly, there’s no point. I’ve said it before, and it’s worth repeating, but if you read a Grant Morrison comic and somehow come away with the idea that he hates super-heroes, I’m sorry, but you simply are not a good reader, because you’ve grossly misunderstood the point. Morrison loves super-heroes. Almost his entire output as a comics writer has been a celebration of the genre. Zenith, Animal Man, JLA, Marvel Boy, Seaguy, All Star Superman, they’re all love letters to the idea of gloriously gaudy men and women in tights having weird adventures. Hell, Flex Mentallo alone is a pretty definitive statement on the transformative joy of super-hero comics.
Now, if you want to talk about writers who hate super-heroes, I can give you that list. Pat Mills. Garth Ennis. Warren Ellis. Heck, Nextwave is almost a treatise on stripping down the super-hero genre to it’s stupidest and basest cliches. That it’s been embraced by so many fans of the Marvel angst school of comics writing makes me wonder if everyone’s in on the joke.
To be honest, I’ve not played more than one or two of the games cited. I do have to say, however, that I object to Tingle being named as the “gayest character” in video games. Tingle isn’t gay. Tingle is just infuriatingly annoying. We’re not going to claim him. He can sit out in the “too friggin’ weird to be gay” hall with Tom Cruise.
I like that Bertram from Temple of Elemental Evil made the list, as I was pleasantly surprised by the inclusion of a gay romantic subplot in the game. It was a nice gesture for those of us who play RPG style games to have a romance story in-game that wasn’t heterosexual. They mention Fable as well, and while I did enjoy that game, I was disappointed in the limited nature of the much vaunted “customization” in the game. Being able to woo and marry men was a nice touch (though it made finishing the brothel sub-quest while remaining a Kinsey 6 tough), though the heteronormative labeling of your partners “wives” was annoying. No shout-outs for Sims or Sims 2, though, which I found interesting, as those were really the first games I can think of whose open-ended nature allowed for gay characters.
Wonder Woman #205 is quite possibly one of the best issues of the magazine ever. It’s so wrong, in such a gloriously delirious way.
Wow…the sheer and utter misogyny of that “all homely women” statement is mind-blowing.
Apparently sensitivity training is not a concern for the UN…
And Diana, Princess of the Amazons, is reduced to tears by the thoughtless comments of a man she’s perfectly capable of ripping in half should she choose to.
And the cover is a thing of perfection as well.
Wonder Woman, in bondage, making a classical reference to tribadism, while straddling a phallic object. This is the point where it stops being sub and becomes simply text.
You know, it’s really, really hard to look at this image from a Dutch ad campaign for the PSP “white” and not see really, really objectionable cultural signifiers on display. It really does seem to be the height of disingenuous to try and claim that images of an angry looking white woman in borderline fetish gear physically dominating a black woman isn’t a potentially racist image. Especially when the follow-up from Sony seems to be that the ads aren’t racist, but a sexist play on “cat fight” imagery.
Additional: The more I think about it, there’s some odd gender imagery going on here as well. Lots of people seem to have gotten the impression from the initial ads that the black woman was a black man, and she’s wearing a hairstyle and shirt with very masculine cuts, while the white woman is very femmed out. In many of the images the masculine black woman is in a submissive pose, while the femme white woman is dominant. These dominant/submissive poses are heightened by the fact that the dark background makes the white woman the more prominent figure, even in the images where the black woman is “beating” her.
Why, it’s almost enough to make the sexism and racism of the comics industry seem quaint…
Now, if more zombie movies were like this, I could stand them. This Australian film is a fun sci-fi/horror/comedy, heavy on the gross-out humor, that plays up all the cliches of the zombie genre. Felicity Mason stars as Rene, a local beauty-queen who just lost the family farm. She’s heading off from her small fishing town to the big city to try to earn some money when a meteor shower falls on the town. Then the townsfolk begin turning into flesh-easting zombies. Then the rain turns to acid. Then aliens begin abducting people. Then a giant metal wall surrounds the town. Then things get weird.
The film doesn’t so much subvert the stereotypes and cliches of genre as it melds them together. There’s a manic edge to it that’s missing in more “serious” horror films, and you’re never quite sure whether any given scene is going to lead to a laugh or a scare. There are elements of lots of other films here, Night of the Comet most conspicuously, but Night of the Living Dead, Braindead and The Crazies as well. It’s also interesting that the film is very similar in tone, though perhaps a bit more on the serious side, to the later film Shaun of the Dead. I’ll leave it to others to argue over which film is better, but given that the advertising I saw for Undead made the film look deathly serious and rote, it’s a bit disappointing but not surprising that the world could only embrace one tongue-in-cheek zombie film.
Plus, Mungo McKay is very hot if you’re into intense hill-billy bears.
In the fourth issue of Michael Alan Nelson and Chee’s Second Wave, the stand-off at the farm-house from last issue gets resolved and the band of survivors grows slightly larger as they go off searching for medical assistance. They hope to find some in a small town that was largely isolated from the attacks, only to find that alien invasions don’t do much to stop racism and xenophobia.
In the second issue of Talent the mystery deepens as to what, exactly, the organization trying to kill Nicolas Dane is up to, as we see even more clearly what depths of cruelty and depravity they’re willing to sink in pursuit of their agenda. Christopher Golden and Tom Sniegoski have written an engaging mystery, and the art of Paul Azaceta complements the darkness of the story.
In Hero Squared‘s second issue, Milo and Captain Valor attend therapy to try and work out their differences. It doesn’t go well. But it doesn’t go well in a solidly entertaining way. The Giffen/DeMatteis/Abraham book is ideal for those looking for biting humor in their super-hero comics. Though, personally, at this point I’m kind of hoping that Milo Slacker finally gets a clue before too many more issues.
Pete and I finally broke down and bought a PlayStation 2. It was a combination of not wanting to have to wait for the Wii to come out to play any new games and the realization that we could use the machine as a back-up DVD player now that ours is dying. We picked up a variety of games, but three in particular are worth mentioning. (Yes, I know I’m late to the party on all of these.)
Kingdom Hearts: You wouldn’t think an amalgamation of Disney characters and the Final Fantasy series of RPGs would work, but the game is actually both fun and challenging, if suffering slightly from the level-up grind that tends to plague RPG style console games.
Katamari Damacy: Is it wrong that this game brings out my homicidal tendencies. For a thoroughly non-violent game, there’s something quite pleasing about rolling people up into a giant ball.
Silent Hill 2: The series was recommended to me by a couple of people who knew I was interested in horror games but was frustrated by the combat systems in most of them. There’s not much combat, and the emphasis is on mood and atmosphere. Unfortunately, that mood and atmosphere largely consists of wandering around in the fog and occasionally hitting a monster with a stick. Oh, and if you solve a ridiculously easy “puzzle” you can wander around a dark building occasionally hitting a monster with a stick.
You know, as much as I dislike stupid fighting in games that aren’t about fighting, I think I dislike games where you have to find the exact right spot to stand to trigger an event that tells you what the hell you’re supposed to be doing in the damn game even more.
Feeling slightly run down tonight. I had thought I might get it together to do a Closet Monsters post, but of the three films that you could loosely classify as “horror” that I watched recently, one I only watched because it had David Arquette in it. And he was, in fact, the only decent thing about Riding the Bullet. You’d think a film about a suicidal guy getting picked up by the angel of death while hitch-hiking would have potential, but no. Minus Man momentarily made me reconsider Owen Wilson’s acting abilities. I’ve now learned that he can actually act, which means he has simply chosen to do schtick instead in all his other films. And Kikabichi was diverting, but it’s a Japanese rubber-suit movie about a samurai werewolf. Not exactly high horror.
Speaking of horror, I’ve been haunting the horror sections of my local bookstores recently, only to be continually frustrated. I keep going in looking for the next Mark Danielewski or Phil Rickman, but what I keep finding are people desperate to be the next Laurell Hamilton. It’s a complaint I make often enough, but it bears repeating; I wish the authors of these endless series of romantic vampire novels would just go ahead and name their heroines “Mary Sue.” It’s not as if it’s not obvious that’s what they’re doing anyway.
I was heavily distracted by this thread today, though. It’s massive, and gamer humor in it’s purest form can easily over-whelm you. If I wasn’t feeling utterly brain-dead today I might try my hand at making a motivational poster. But, no.
(And I’m looking at role-playing stuff because I’m being…emphatically encouraged to start playing again after a prolonged hiatus. And I feel slightly out of touch with what’s going on. All I really know anymore is that the MMO version of D&D struck me as an even more frustrating version of Guild Wars. That’s how out of touch I am.)
[And yes, I did the Gaymer survey, focused on gay video game players. Taking the survey, I kept asking myself, "Okay, I play a couple hours a day, maybe, three or four days a week, just to have fun...who the hell is answering 'yes' to some of these question?"]
Part of my ennui has been the result of feeling a bit, well, put-upon as a gay man in America. Yes, I do so love my very right to exist being used as a cynical political ploy by a failing President desperate to shore up what remains of his party faithful. I do so love knowing that any crimes committed against me because of my sexual identity won’t be taken seriously. I do so love being told that the mere fact that I am on this planet is an affront to God and man and a corrupting influence on children. Oh, and by the way, how dare I suggest, tongue in cheek, that a superhero comic might have gay subtext. Gayprof, unsurprisingly, sums the feeling up nicely as well.
At least Hank knows how to bring a smile to my face:
(Alas, the Henry Rollins tearing Ann Coulter a new one video has been removed from YouTube…)
And if that doesn’t work, here’s Ed Fury reading Mad:
I’m sure that this is a sign of the video-game industry maturing and beginning to recognize that focusing on the physical attributes only of women is demeaning to both men and women.
And not, you know, an attempt to forestall criticism in the midst of a political climate that’s blaming video games for juvenile deliquincy and violence against women, in a remarkably eerie parallel of the scapegoating the comics industry received in the fifties and the music industry in the eighties.
So, now that the NDA has been lifted, I can finally talk in public about City of Villains and my participation in the beta-test. If you’re familiar with City of Heroes, you already know the concept of COV. Only this time, instead of good, noble and pure defenders of right in Paragon City, you’re dastardly ne’er-do-wells in the Rogue Islands. Gameplay is very similar to COH (okay, it’s identical), but there are some really well-done new graphics sets, powers, tons of new storylines, an insane number of new costume pieces (including a stunning new variety of capes), and five all new archetypes for characters. You’ve got the Brute-a vicious fighter whose damage increases over time, the Stalker-a stealthy assassin, the Corrupter-a ranged damage dealer who can help his allies or hinder his foes, the Dominator-who backs up the ability to hinder foes with impressive melee attacks (okay, it’s basically just the Controller from COH), and the Mastermind-who summons minions to do his bidding.
The overall feel of the game is similar in tone to villain focused comics like Secret Society of Super Villains, Villains United, and such. You spend about as much time fighting turf wars with other villains as you do fighting good guys (or nuisance groups that are merely interfering with the long-term goals of Arachnos, the main villain organization in the COH/COV universe…a lot of enemies fall into this category-neither really heroes or villains, just sort of…in the way of Lord Recluse’s plans). I was greatly heartened to encounter a hero organization loosely inspired, it seems, by the views of the Knights Templar popularized by occult historians and conspiracy theorists. The Legacy Chain are essentially knights and mages trying to stop the use of evil magic and protect valuable artifacts. My main villain, a science-based corrupter, truly loves pounding on “magical” heroes.
Mission-wise, it seems that a lot of hard lessons have been learned from COH. There are many new mission types, with more varied goals than simply go to Location X and beat up Person Y and click on Object Z. There’s plenty of of that still there, but the newer mission types help break up the monotony that frequently occurs in COH. One of my favorite new missions was the Cape Trial for villains. COH’s Cape Trial is rather dull, consisting mostly of fighting past enemies and then beating up a small group of them before they can destroy a destructable object. In COV’s trial you must sneak into Paragon City, either go on a killing spree against the hero group Longbow or sneak your way around them, destroy several memorial statues to fallen heroes and fight a Paragon City hero and steal their cape to prove to Arachnos that you’re worthy of wearing one. It’s a dynamic mission that gives you options on how to complete it, and manages to surprise you with well-timed ambushes from heroes and actually challenging enemies.
Another big change is the introduction of player-versus-player zones. I’m not a big fan of PVP in on-line games. It tends to encourage munchkin players with min/maxed builds who display unsportsmanlike behavior, but I may give it a shot with COV because the PVP zones actually have storylines associated with them and give you things to do other than beat the tar out of other players. There’s also a mix of free-for-all PVP and faction-based PVP zones, so those of us who really hate free-for-all PVP can at least give the faction-based approach a try.
My main villain, a science corrupter. Note that you can now make male toons with body hair. Oh sure, you have to be a fan of the cave-man look, but at least it’s a step.
An alternate costume. The new variety of capes are truly impressive, including split capes, shaped capes, tattered capes, scarfs and fringe.
In this picture you also have a better look at the sardonic expression on my guy’s face. I love that the villains actually look more smug than the heroes.
The new physics engine for the defeated enemies makes for a nice and often surprising variety of poses for fallen foes. A lot of thought went into behaviors and animations for both player-villains and enemies.
Oh, and just be glad I didn’t get a good screen-shot of the new female additions to the Freakshow gang. Truly horrifying.
You can make truly inhuman looking characters now. And they can wear top hats. And surf the internet between missions.
Both male and female toons get pirate-themed costume pieces. And female toons can wear fishnets. And yes, top hats are also available for the female toons. You wouldn’t believe the number of Zatanna-inspired toons running around in the beta servers.
No kilts yet though. Dammit!
Thank God! You can now actually sit down! Do you have any idea how many months my heroes have been forced to stand up all the time? They only ever get to even lie down when they’ve been defeated.
RT @ThatWeissGuy: I've enjoyed a lot of morally dubious things, but I never felt the need to project my guilt onto those who point out t ... O.T.11 hours ago
@DrPuppykicker Didn't see it, no clue. I DO know that Mark Millar was thanked in the CAPTAIN AMERICA film... O.T.11 hours ago
To hear "maybe it would be nice if you acknowledged that Jack Kirby created this billion dollar property" and think "CYINIC!" is bizarre. O.T.11 hours ago
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