Geektastic Holidays Ahoy!

Wormer here.

Lots of geek stuff happening for me personally. In no particular order of importance---


Swiney lent me trades of the entire Preacher series because he loves it and probably because I'm such a fan of Garth Ennis' "Battlefields" series.

I've read through the first three and "Ancient History" which covers the backstory of some of the secondary characters and I have to say I love it. It's a weird combination of things that Ennis mixes into his tale but it happens to be stuff that's right up my alley: westerns, Catholic theology (I'm a reformed Catholic,) vampires and such. There's also a faint subtext of Douglas Adams in much of the dark humor mixed into the story. Great stuff.



I got rid of my comics box a couple of months ago but picked up a ton of comics for the kid's stockings as I do every year. One of the titles was "The Marvel Zombies Return."

The original Marvel Zombies is a darkly hysterical take on an alternative universe where an infected superhero comes to earth, quickly turns the Marvel Zombies into the undead and they, in turn, eat everybody on earth in a matter of hours. Unfortunately the mini-series that followed this brilliant debut didn't quite measure up in terms of creativity with the zombie Spiderman and company conquering their hunger, becoming vegetarians and essentially nerfing the harder edge that had made the title stand out.

MZR has the series back to form. The zombies have been cast to other alternative realities where they suddenly regain their hunger and go all all you can eat buffet again. The first title has Spiderman falling into his own storyline from the 70's and trying to be a hero but winding up eating each and every archvillain that ever faced him, ultimately causing the plague all over again.



In my own Christmas Stocking were copies of the Weird War 2 expansion for the Savage Worlds rpg, the "Temeraire" series of books which Peter Jackson is going to make into a television series and Left For Dead 2 for the PC which will suck up some of my time when I get a chance.



I've played video games since I was a kid with a penchant for computer games. This means I literally have decades of experience tweaking settings, loading floppies, updating drivers or whatever the hell I have to do to make a particular bit of gaming software work.

At the top of my son's Christmas list was a game called "Section 8." It's a 3-D shooter set in the future, sort of a mix of Battlefront and Halo. He was especially excited to unwrap the thing.

What followed was about three days of hell as I struggled to get this software running. It will come as no surprise that Microsoft is the publisher of this monstrosity. Much of the problem can be traced to Microsoft's DRM scheme. They require an internet connection to their Windows Live gaming network even if you're playing single player. Naturally this didn't work and the game would crash every time it tried to connect.

After searching the net I found that we weren't alone in facing this problem and that many, many people who had bought the game had struggled with the same issue. Complicating this was the fact there was no one solution but a mix of removing and reinstalling Games for Windows and removing and installing Section 8 seemed to be what resolved the problem for most people.

The only reason I can assume that this software was released in this poor of a state has to be that Microsoft really wants to kill computer gaming so everybody that games will buy an XBox. No other theory makes sense.

--Dean Wormer
-

Is A Group Of Zombies Called A "Herd" Or A "Pack?"

This is going to sound really sexist but I get worried when Zoe Saldana states that she's going to fight to have Uhura wear pants. Apparently she just doesn't get the character. This is akin to Zachary Quinto arguing that Spock shouldn't have pointy ears or Shatner playing Kirk without a hair piece. It's just wrong.

---

This io9 article on the preponderance of zombies in comics really rubbed me the wrong way. For one thing it opens with this tripe:

First, DC Comics unleashed a legion of undead characters in its Blackest Night event. Now, Marvel has announced Necrosha, an upcoming X-Men storyline that will bring back lots of dead mutants. When did zombie superheroes become the hot new thing?

Serious fans of comics of which I don't include myself will immediately see the problem with that opening statement. Put that aside there's much more history to zombies and comics, especially surrounding the comics code, that the author appears oblivious to. Don't write about something you don't know.

---

Put me in the David Tennant for Bilbo crowd.

---

Here's an interview from Comic con with the great Hayao Miyasaki. My favorite bits- Miyasaki doesn't watch movies or television and still won't commit to retirement. He's going to make movies until he drops.

---

I just finished all the League of Extrodinary Gentlemen GNs including 1910. Wonderful, dense work as usual from Moore. The only criticism I might level is that the books suffer (especially 1910) from a preponderence of too many characters who often have nothing to actually DO. It's really a minor quibble with some fine work.

---

Me and the fam are plodding through season 5 of Buffy. That's the season where Buffy's sister Dawn is introduced. The first three episodes at least have incredibly clever/ funny dialog that's still light years ahead of most stuff on television. Great show.

-----Dean Wormer
-

Miyazaki And Zombies and Scooby, Oh My!

Lots of geek stuff bouncing around my head today. Probably because I got to talk to Swinebread for a while yesterday and that always gets me thinking about this stuff.

The English language version of the trailer of Hayao Miyazaki's new film Ponyo surfaced yesterday. I had the pleasure of springing on my Miyazaki nut daughter leading to her watching the thing at least five times.

In the course of reading up on that flick she saw the rumor that Miyazaki may be making a rare public appearance at Comicon. Now I have her working on me to take a trip to San Diego. Sigh.



Even though I'm a fan of the Marvel Zombies (the first books were works of sick genius in my opinion) the stories have really petered out, predictably as the zombies got "cuddly." With that in mind the announcement that Marvel was bringing on some heavy duty zombie writers for the next iteration of the series raised my interest.

In particular David Wellington's "Monster" series of zombie books were all sorts of scary, so I can't wait to see what he does with the zombified Marvel heroes.



Even though I'm late to this party I have to say that Left 4 Dead is one of the best shooters I've ever played. I got the thing for Father's Day and it's bloody awesome. There's not a lot to the game other than trying to survive zombie attacks while you work your way through a city/ sewers/ base but what it does, it does really well.



Thanks to the library we're working our way through almost every animated version of Batman they have on hand. In the last week we've watched "Batman: Gotham Knight," "Batman: The Brave and the Bold Season One" and "Scooby Doo Meets Batman." Not surprisingly my kid's favorite was that last title. Even though they're older they do love them some Scooby.



I finished reading Brian K. Vaughan's "Pride of Baghdad" last week and you'll have to color me unimpressed. It's disappointing because I loved the concept of pride of lions escaping an Iraqi zoo during the initial U.S. attack in 2002.

I enjoyed the symbolism, heavy-handed as it might be but couldn't by into one of the book's central conceipts- Vaughan and his artist Niko Henrichon specifically riff off of the animation of Disney and the Disney practice of animorphism. Essentially they draw the lions very Disneyesque but then involve the characters in very adult situations. Call me a prude if you will but I found this off-putting.

--Dean Wormer
-