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Well its that time once again. San Diego Comic-Con has come and gone and once again I did not go. I swear that one of these days I will go to SDCC. It'll probably be in about ten years, but better late than never. On to the news!
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Possibly the coolest thing ever.
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This link from Bleeding Cool has footage that has been put online of a project that a student is doing at the University of Illinois at Chicago about a special touch screen Star Wars computer game called Fleet Commander. The first video footage is by far the coolest thing I have seen in a long while. This will probably never make it out of this stage, but imagine being able to play something like that on the huge scale of the first video. I think they could skin the ships differently and include a Star Trek side to the whole thing. Maybe it would finally settle the conflict of who would win in a battle of Star Trek versus Star Wars ships. My money is on the Star Wars ships, but that is just my personal bias.
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New HeroClix Released
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Last month saw the release of the latest expansion for the HeroClix game by NECA/Wizkids. The set, Captain America, followed hot on the heels of the Giant Sized X-Men set that was released back in March 2011. The set was timed to coincide with the release of the Captain America: The First Avenger movie late in July, and I think this is the first major release by Wizkids/NECA that has not been delayed for one reason or another. There was a delay in the release of the Gravity Feed Captain America miniatures, but the big main set was not delayed. As with all HeroClix expansions there is the big theme of the set, Captain America, and a bunch of little themes in the set. For this one, the smaller ones are the likes of the Great Lakes Avengers, Secret Warriors, Serpent Society and Winter Guard. Sure there are some one-off characters like Squirrel Girl (who is a Super-Rare), Kitty Pryde (also a Super-Rare), Klaw (who I have a soft spot for because of Secret Wars) but the majority of the set is SHIELD and HYDRA. The "chase" rares for the set are mostly variations of Captain America, such as Captain America with Thor's Hammer, Werewolf Captain America, and Rojhaz from the 1602 miniseries. There is also a gimmick running through the set that some of the characters have things that are removable from their dial. For example, one of the versions of Captain America in the set has a removable shield, Falcon has a removable Redwing and Squirrel Girl has a removable Monkey Joe. I think this is Wizkids trying to get back to the days of using "pog" characters to appease their players who like that sort of thing. There is a game mechanic to some of the removable parts, but to have a Wolverine that is in a Weapon X tank that breaks out after a certain amount of time just seems like a waste of space. I just hate to see that this is going to be a regular thing because people are already buying up the Army Builders to have (this goes back to Hammer of Thor if not further) that they are going to try to field a massive amount of SHIELD or HYDRA Agents that most characters can mow through in one attack. I can see playing a theme team with some characters like Nick Fury, but other than that, I don't see a lot of good things happening for that team with about 200 points of SHIELD Agents. I thought I was going to get away with not getting any of the LE's from the tournament kit, but they have an LE Bob HYDRA Agent that I would love to have to play with my Deadpool from Web of Spider-Man. I would also like to have the map from this set, but that should be relatively easy to get a hold of.
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Now I wish I went to San Diego Comic-Con
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At the San Diego Comic-Con this year they had a "pop-up" Bar/comic shop called Tr!ckster just across the tracks from the con. Not only could you stop by and pick-up some trades by independent artists and writers, but also you could take part in some life drawing sessions of models posing wearing barely anything and holding plastic toy guns. Don't believe me; here's a link to the report on the Bleeding Cool web site all about it. Now make your roll to disbelieve. Having taken a grand total of one drawing class at the college level that mostly focused on still life; I would not have been as good as the people in the photos, but I think I would have been able to hold my own. The only bad thing about the room they are in is that it is very poorly lit. Granted a "pop-up" place may not have access to a full lighting rig with spot and flood lights like we had in the class I was in, but you would think it would be lit a bit better. Also looking at the pictures in that link, it looks like the backpack is a big player at con's all around the world and not just at the cons here in Dallas. I would have gone with the messenger bag/laptop bag myself because it helps keep things flat and can distribute the weight over the shoulder and torso, but that is just the way I roll.
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A Difference of Opinion
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The following was tweeted by Martin Pasko:
TMNT was a lame, amateurish B&W indie when TV ani producer Fred Wolf bought the option for chump change. No key TMNT branding element came from Eastman or Laird-not Turtles' personalities or any shtik like pizza thing. Every TMNT thing that was leveraged 4 big licensing bux came from the cartoon, not the stupid, insipidl B&W indie comix. TMNT works almost exclusively thanx 2 creative innovations by the brilliant David Wise How do I know all this? I wrote the 3rd TMNT episode of the ongoing series (i.e., after David Wise's 5-part "pilot") & a few more TMNTs, & I can swear that what made TMNT huge & famous was what David brought to it. Why? Bcoz I consulted comix AS WELL AS David's pilot script & bible & the comix were useless as ref. 4 series that estabed property. Fanboys hate hearing this, but most peeps who get "Created By" cred have high-powered lawyers who fuck over collaborators.
(every misspelling and grammar error was left intact) Now I know nothing about the behind the scenes politics of the TMNT cartoon, but I know that the old Eastman and Laird comics kicked all kinds of behind. They only made minor changes to the look of the turtles so it would be easier for the kids to tell them apart. Not like that there were some clues already with Raphael wearing his sai in the front, Leonardo had the overlapping straps to hold his weapons, and Donatello had the one strap holding his bo staff to his back. Casey Jones in the comic was not some psychopathic goon in a hockey mask like he was in the cartoon. In the comic, Casey Jones was just a vigilante going out every night with his hockey stick and other implements of destruction and fighting crime. I actually think of the two other versions of the Casey Jones character, I think the one that got closest to the comic was the movie one. The original comics didn't sell very well, which is why today the early issues of the black and white series are really sought after and command big bucks.
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Lamenting a Loss
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These times they are a changin'. A long time ago one of the local malls was a thriving busting place that was always loaded with people. Now with the suburbs getting more populated and opening their own malls then that left my local mall in a lurch. They lost two of their anchor stores and the smaller businesses also started closing up shop. Right now at my local mall the only thing open other than the two anchor stores is the AMC movie theater. That means that my local game store is gone now. They used to stock pretty much anything (except Games Workshop products) and the thing they had a lot of was metal miniatures. It was there that I picked up my first metal miniatures that I made an attempt to paint. I did not do such a good job, but the effort was there and I did not give up. You see, I really like metal miniatures in the 28mm scale. They have a heft to them and are pretty stable . I purchased some Games Workshop Metal Minis, and probably paid way too much for them, and they had a great look to them. Granted you had to put them together yourself and had to hold everything in place by pinning them with paperclips and super glue, but once that bond was made they held together unless you dropped them. What I preferred were the ones by Reaper that were generally one solid piece. Games Workshop has also gone from making metal miniatures to producing most of their Warhammer and 40K lines in non-toxic resin. Yes this does make them kind of less expensive than the metal ones, but as I have read on the internet, resin is a very hard substance to work with. Also the resin that is spun into the molds is not always taking to the mold right so when it pops out there are all sorts of deformities to the product. Add that to the fact that there is not always the best quality control for the product, then you have a lot of angry fans on your hands. My one and only source for metal miniatures has dried up since the game store left the mall. I'll now have to go to the internet to get my mini's fix and not only have to pay the tax in some cases, but also a shipping charge of at least $5. Maybe I am just better off sticking to my fine arts and forgetting about miniatures for right now.
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