Heath Ledger

"[We] are devastated that he will no longer be on hand to divert us, surprise us, inspire us, cheer us."

Oh, now it's just getting silly.

The Rehabilitation of Henry J Pym

Right, so as part of the Silver Bullets transformation into Comics Bulletin, they've set aside Tuesdays exclusively for Marvel content. And they've asked me to do a regular column, in which I bitch and moan about a Marvel character, because bitching and moaning brings in the punters, apparently. The first one is up, and concerns one Hank Pym, better known as Ant-Man. Or Yellowjacket. Or Giant-Man. Or Goliath. Or Dr. Pym...

Anyway, it's here. And "Green Day" wasn't my idea.

Brand New Day

Two posts in two weeks. It's getting to be a habit.

Not much to report, actually, except that over at SBC, we've read the first chapter of "Brand New Day" and found it rather less than brand new. If you read Spider-Man comics at any point between, say, 1969 and 1985, you've seen all of this before. That's not to say that it's not any good, but... well, read the review.

Renegade Master

Again, it's been a while. Oops.

Things have been fairly eventful, which makes a change, as usually I struggle to find interesting things to talk about here. The biggest thing is that we've moved house. We were feeling a bit cramped in our flat, despite the sea view, and so we've been looking at moving up to a house; Meg had been searching for a while, and we didn't think we were going to even start the process of moving until the spring, but she chanced upon a small cottage a bit further out of town than where we were (no sea view). We went to see it, loved it, and decided to go for it. We had to take it pretty much then and there, so we moved in a rush about a week before Christmas. And because the flat was part-furnished, we didn't have any furniture.

And we still don't. Our sofa and bed aren't arriving until February, so we spent Chrimble sitting in fishing chairs and sleeping on inflatable mattresses. A full third of our presents seemed to be among the two million lost by a beleaguered Royal Mail, and Meg burnt or sliced most of her fingers preparing the Chrimble dinner. Still, even with all that, and the requisite Christmas Colds, we had a pretty good time of it in our new place. It will be nice when we have real furniture, although I secretly quite like these funky fishing chairs.

I should probably also mention that my story "More Than You Can Chew" was recently printed in the third issue of vaguely-horror-themed anthology comic Paragon. It's not my best work by any means, as it's more of an illustration of a concept than a real story, but nonetheless it's great to see it in print. The rest of the issue is a really good read, including a fun mystical superhero thingie called Battle Ganesh, which plays like a Hindu Dragon Ball Z, and should turn out to be the star strip of the comic, Paragon's version of Judge Dredd or Dan Dare. Should you want to pick up a copy, you can find ordering details on the ComicSpace page.

Alas, the funky comics project I was hoping to kick off, um, today isn't ready, and I'm still behind on a strip I'm drawing for a friend, so my New Year's resolutions are to get the latter done by the end of January, and to at least get started on the former by Easter.

Oh, and the Silver Bullet Comic Books Year In Review for 2007 is up. Go and see what I was grumpy about last year, and what my more level-headed colleagues actually liked. Also at SBC, a review of Amazing Spider-Man #545. I'd dropped ASM a while ago, on the grounds of it being rubbish, and I wish I'd stuck to my boycott.

It's back to work for me tomorrow. Given how I forget how to do everything after only a weekend, having almost two weeks off will completely throw me, most likely.

Moon On A Stick

I saw Richard Herring in the street today. He's quite tiny.

The King Is Dead?

I think Papa Lazarou may have been out-scaried by The Mighty Boosh's Cockney Eel Man.

I Did It Thirty-Five Minutes Ago

Apologies to Americans and Torrenters, but I'm watching Heroes on BBC Three, so I'm a bit behind you lot. So this is unlikely to be a ground-breaking bit of analysis to you, but I have to tell someone, as it meant nothing to Meg, as she's never read Watchmen.

But my word, the Heroes people have. We found out tonight that Linderman, the shadowy yet successful businessman, and former member of a previous generation's superhero group, wants to save the world by uniting it in a time of crisis, a crisis he's not planned exactly, but certainly knows about, a crisis that will kill half of New York City.

When the most powerful character so far turned out to be an obsessive son of a watchmaker, I thought "ooh, a nod to Watchmen" but this is full blown homage. The creator of the show says he doesn't know much about comics, and any similarities are just coincidence. I call shenanigans on that.

You've Gotta Be F*ckin' Kiddin'!

Yeah, so they are going to be remaking The Thing.

Now, on one hand, there have been two very different, and very good, versions already, so there's nothing to say that they can't go back to the source material and produce a third worthwhile film. But they're not going back to the source material; it's a "companion piece" to John Carpenter's version.

Argh.

Brushing Off the Dust

Yes, still alive, just not interesting enough to blog.

How about Halloween? I've decided I probably won't bother seeing the completely unnecessary remake. I'm a huge fan of the original, but it's not sour grapes that compels me to shun the new pretender, more that I really don't see the point. The umpteen sequels have essentially been remakes, bringing nothing new to the formula set out in the first film, and taking away plenty, and I don't see Rob Zombie managing to change that. I'll probably catch it on DVD, but I'm still hoping they'll find some way to clean up the dreadful film quality in the original.

(Halloween did get me thinking about my still-in-development God of Power Metal idea, but I shouldn't talk any more about that right now. Anticipation, and all that.)

Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition (I feel there should be a colon in there somewhere) is a remake done properly, however. The controls are a clever evolution of the series' traditional scheme, as well as being a good use of the Wiimote/Nunchuk combo, and the gameplay itself is very well designed, although it took me a while to get back into the essential mindset of how to play a Resi game (the last time for me was Resi2, which sucked up much A Level revision time). I'm not very far into it, but there's one great siege sequence which is a fine twist on the usual boss battle. Resi2 is my favourite of the series so far, but 4 is a fine entry, and could supplant its predecessor. It's also very important to see games like this done well on Wii, as it can only help to solidify the machine's credentials as a serious contender (rather than a niche alternative) in the current "console wars".

The job is also going very well, but I'm having the next week off in order to get some bits and pieces done that I've allowed myself to neglect. With luck, and if I don't spend all that time fobbing off my plans, I should have some things to show off over the next few days.

Too Hip to be Square

They let me in again. I've just had another article published at the Wii Virtual Console Archive; this one's about finding alternatives to the big role-playing game franchises like Final Fantasy.

Am I a video game journalist now?