Personally, I think Ethan Hawke and Vincent D’Onofrio are both actors I could stand to see in more movies. So, it’s nice to see them together on a new project. Scott Derrickson’s Sinister looks like a pretty good horror movie mixing much of what made The Ring and Amityville Horror...
Mayan Calendar (Photo credit: Michael Kwan (Freelancer))
I’m just going to come out with a bold prediction: the world isn’t going to end tomorrow. I’ll just leave it to the friendly people at NASA to do the grunt work of debunking if you don’t believe me. While I think this whole Mayan calender hysteria has gotten a little overboard I do find apocalyptic things generally fascinating. I often nerd out on documentaries about fallen civilizations. I sometimes go on mini marathons of the History Channel show Life After People and the book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed was my favorite non-fiction book that I have read this year. On the fiction side I don’t really care how the world ends I just like reading about what happens in the aftermath.
So I finally got around to reading the final issue of AvX. It was epic! It was amazing! The heroes saved Earth and defeated the Phoenix using the combined power of The Scarlet Witch and Hope, the savior of all mutants. And then things took the cheesy turn. Wow! Poof the power of the phoenix has now dispersed and there are suddenly a bunch of new mutants (no I didn’t say “New Mutants“) on the planet.
How Convenient.
So with all of the carnage and destruction that occurred,Marvel has an excuse to repopulate the marvel universe with a ton of new heroes and villains. But, at what cost? Here is where my issues lie. Very little damage was done to the marvel universe. OK a “rarely seen of late” Professor X was killed and some X-heroes are now on the run. Oh and the avengers realized that they should team up with the X-Men for the good of Earth. Contrast is important in comics, a hero is only a hero because of his moral comparison to the villains. Gains are measured by loss. And the Marvel Universe lost very little. A chance to sacrifice even some B-list heroes to usher in some new ones with the “Marvel Now” initiative would have made sense. Some gravity to offset the sudden creation of a bunch of instantly created mutants. Now here is where Marvel wants to have its cake and eat it too. They want the old heroes to still draw the veteran writers and artists and still have new heroes for up and comers to take a crack at on the cheap. And hey, who knows? possibly a movie in 3-4 years! Simply put Avengers went to their head. All business. Good for Marvel in the short term I guess. I know they are thinking “Hey a bunch of 13 year old kids watched Avengers and loved it so we need to freshen things up and get them buying comics and then buy tickets to the next blockbuster”. In my opinion they are sacrificing the loyal reader for this strategy. I have nothing against attracting a new younger audience. But, don’t come down to their level, bring them up. Make them feel empowered they are reading a book with some complicated and mature takes on heroes. This is an audience that could choose to grab Saga, Walking Dead, or Thief of Thieves, from Image Comics or just follow individual writers like Ed Brubaker (his Daredevil run was amazing) who are willing to do so much with character.
Well the Marvel Now reboot will either give me a chance to try something new or pare back my pull-list. To be determined…
Actually these are web-comic collection books. But also, a who’s who of web comics. Including 2 Penny Arcade books: Attack of the Bacon Robots and Epic Legends of the Magic Sword Kings. 2 more by Zach Weiner: Save Yourself, Momma! and The Most Dangerous Game. And of course XKCD Volume by Randall Monroe. Average price right now is $13.57 for 13 books!
Yesterday the passes for PAX East 2013 went on sale! And I will finally be going. Pax East is from March 22nd – March 24th 2013 in Boston. This is my trip to Disney. No, I am not telling you this to rub it in. I just wanted to remind anyone that if you have any interest to getting passes they will sell out fast. 3 Day passes have unfortunately sold out as of this post and it has only been a day and a half. Do not wait! Hotels are just as hard to nab but you might be able to figure that out later. Post here if interested or also going.
I came across this site the other day and it seems like a fantastic way to start or help your eReader library. Like the way the HumbleBundle site promotes independent game developers and charity, the StoryBundle site promotes independent authors and charity.
StoryBundle is currently selling a collection of five crime thrillers for whatever you wish to pay: Black Bird by Greg Enslen, Blood Red Turns Dollar Green by Paul O’Brien, Diary of a Small Fish by Pete Morin, The Marinara Murders by Eric Hanberg, and Dire Means by Geoffrey Neil. Additionally, if you pay at least $7.00 you receive two more books: Project Moses by Robert Lowe and The Saints Go Dying by Erik Hanberg. Everything is DRM free and you can also support either Trees For The Future or Mighty Writers.
If there were to be say a “Geek Hall of Fame”, all three things involved in this video would have a place. Ben Folds Five, Fraggle Rock, and The Nerdist. This is the video for Ben Folds Five new song “Do it Anyway” featuring Fraggles and Chris Hardwick from The Nerdist. Watch untill the very end of the video. I hope this signifies more work on the Fraggle Rock movie http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Fraggle_Rock_(movie). Also check out all the other great stuff from The Nerdist Channel on youtube.
I recently attended Gen Con Indy with my wife Sarah Parkhurst and my two friends Philip Young and Nathan Laird. This was my first time attending a Gen Con; I would highly recommend anyone interested in gaming to attend a Gen Con at least once. Being my first time, nothing could have prepared me for one of the nerdiest events on Earth. Everyone knows that it is a great place to tap cards, move miniatures around a board, try new board games, and loot some swag. Also it is an event that shows off what is so great about gaming in general, the passion of the developers and the gamers themselves. Just seeing pictures of the event doesn’t do it justice. I know for myself, I ‘am very happy I attended this year and I look forward to going again.
The event itself had a really great setup. The location for Gen Con Indy was at the Indianapolis Convention Center. This convention center is rather large and has a great location being in downtown Indianapolis. There are many restaurants and great locations if you somehow get bored of Gen Con. It is also connected to Circle Center Mall which was advantages for parking and food gathering. Inside Gen Con, things get a little crazier (not too much though). First impression walking inside is there are a lot of people, who knew people like games and stuff. The approximate attendance was a mix of 41,000 orcs, elves, Jawas, Bleach characters, sweaty knights and Jedi families.
The main attraction for me at least was the Exhibitors hall. The Exhibitors hall had everything gaming and Nerd related. One of my favorite stops was where my Friend Phil Young was working at which was the MythicMTG booth. This is run by the owner of Fantasy Games Mark Cracco. This is a great card and board game store that Phil Young, Nathan Laird, Sarah Parkhurst and I used to play Magic at when we lived in Northern Indiana. Another great stop was the Dungeons and Dragons booth. They had quite the nice setup, with a dungeon theme, Drizzt Do’Urden statue and a huge statue of Lolth the Spider Queen. I got a chance to try the next Neverwinter game out, which seemed promising.
Posted by Phil Young | Posted in Stuff | Posted on 13-08-2012
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Joe Kubert. The World will be a sadder place without a man of his magnitude. August 12, 2012, Joe Kubert died at the age of 85. My earliest memory of this man was flipping through my drug store Superman and seeing advertising for The Kubert School.
I mean, this was the stuff I wanted to do. Go to school to become an artist. He told me it was possible! He was first famous for is work on Hawkman and Sgt. Rock. He then fathered two of the greatest comic book artists of our generation, Andy and Adam Kubert. Their work on everything from The Avengers to the X-Men redefined comic art and raised the bar for the new and up and coming Pencilers. Joe was trailblazer and a hero among heroes. He was part of the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame and The Jack Kirby Hall of Fame. His legacy will live on through his son’s and students. Next time we pick up a comic book, take a second out of your day and remember to say thank you to Mr. Joe Kubert for all of his contributions to one of our favorite past-times.
Posted by Phil Young | Posted in Stuff | Posted on 10-08-2012
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As you all know there are some amazing things going on with Social Media and our good ol’ friend, the Interwebz. One of the best things to happen to myself and fellow gamer’s was a compilation of some amazing videos and original content including the popular web series The Guild and the best Sci-Fi/Fantasy Book review Sword and Laser.
All these great videos have been brought together on GEEK & Sundry. While catching up on some rather awesome episodes of my favorite shows, I ran into (last April) a video with famed Wil Wheaton and one of my favorite games of all time Smallworld. It was called Table Top. It was funny, informative and changed my whole work experience that week. People flooded in and started buying up all the copies of Smallworld we had and special ordered ones we did not. I could not believe the impact a single web show had on the gaming community. Sales for the game of Smallworld have been up 300% since the episode aired and we sold, in the single month of April, as many copies as we had in the previous year combined. I started following sales of the games featured on the show, and the trend was obvious, 2-10 times more copies of featured games and massive requests of games related with publishers of said games. It was great. We started ordering accordingly and had more and more casual gamer’s that watched “that one youtube show with the guy from Big Bang Theory in it.” A whole new world was being opened to people who had watched a TV show, followed a Twitter feed and watched a YouTube video. We share these exciting new experiences with people we love and like hanging out with. I implore all of you to share these shows with the ones we never would have thought would like board games/card games. Who knows, you might have a new play group. Thanks for reading!
Not a slew of posts the past few days here on Leisurely Geeks. A good amount of us are on vacation and actually hanging out without the use of video/audio chat apps on the PC. I guess the rest of the crew must be enthralled with the Olympics. Some of us went to the Sterling Renaissance Festival in Sterling NY yesterday. A fun time was had by all, especially the youngsters in the group. Does anyone else besides me think jousting would make for a cool Olympic sport? Hey, there are worse ones. Handball WTF!! Anyway, have a great week and we’ll try and get some posts up while recuperating between bouts of the outdoors and its searing rays of sunlight.
