I can't post this enough

In light of my last post, I wanted to give an example of the real Fantastic Four, someone who really gets the team's personality and dynamics. Nothing fits the bill quite like this:

"And the Thing just loves to fight!" Why, it's like they've leapt off the page and onto the screen!

I don't say this nearly enough

You know, for all the times I've ragged on them in the past, for all the energy and enthusiasm I focus on the competition, and for all the abuse I heap upon their current EIC, there's something that often gets left by the wayside:
I Love Marvel Comics
Maybe it's just the video games talking; maybe it's the fact that I have three unread issues of Marvel freaking Apes sitting on my desk, but I really do love Marvel Comics. Not everything about them, mind you--as you might guess, I go through periods where my love is on the down-swing, but there are a lot of things about the Marvel Universe that just hold a special little place in my heart. So, for the next few days, I'm going to wax a little poetic about the House of Ideas.

And where should I begin? Well, I've been playing Marvel: Ultimate Alliance again recently. The first time I played through, my main team consisted of Captain America, Spider-Man, Thor, and Luke Cage, who occasionally got swapped out for the Thing (though I can't quite remember why). This time around, I've been playing a bit more with some of the in-continuity teams. The X-Men are fun, since there are so many combinations, and it's been neat to watch everyone mourning the death of Nightcrawler...even when he's in my party. I do wish Cyclops weren't such a wuss, but what else is new? The Classic Avengers are fun, especially since I already keep Cap and Thor in their original costumes, and Iron Man's classic armor has better boosts than any other early-unlockable suit. I was chomping at the bit halfway through the game so I could unlock Ghost Rider and build the New Fantastic Four team, which is sadly about as effective as it looks. I still need to get the Joe Fixit outfit for Hulk so I can complete the look. As soon as I unlock Silver Surfer, I'm going to put together an erstwhile Defenders team (aren't they all?). But more than anything, I keep coming back to the Fantastic Four. In my first play-through, it seemed like Thing was the only one with anything useful to contribute, but after playing with them a bit, I see what an incredible group they really are. Johnny's fire powers are all so good that I have trouble picking which ones to keep active; Sue's force field ability and "Unstoppable Force" skill make her nigh-invulnerable; Thing has a great set of upgrades and abilities. If there's a weak link, it's Mr. Fantastic, who still has some pretty devastating attacks. Maybe it's just because I rock the game's socks, but playing as the FF has given me quite a bit of insight into why four folks with relatively tame powers can be one of the most formidable forces in the Marvel Universe.

I'll admit that as a kid, I never really got into the team. I bought the title for a short time around Infinity War (with all the doppelgangers running around) and again when Reed was "dead" and Thing was wearing a mask, but they never caught my interest. The next time I regularly bought the World's Greatest Comic Magazine was during the Waid/Wieringo years--specifically, the storyline where Dr. Doom turns his ex-girlfriend into a suit of skin-armor. Contrary to how that sounds, the book was incredibly fun, and is among the best things I've ever read by Mark Waid. The thing about the Fantastic Four that I think tends to get lost in the shuffle is that the best stories, whether they take place in the Negative Zone or the suburbs, are ones that center around the interactions and relationships between the FF family members.

And that, I think, is why the FF is the only group in the Marvel Universe who can make a transition from New York street crime to global supervillainy, to space invasions and otherdimensional entities, and do it seamlessly. They are, quite literally, the close-knit family that can handle anything. When written poorly, the Fantastic Four are just another superteam; when written well, the Fantastic Four is totally unique among comic book superheroes.

And that's pretty fantastic.

Oh what a tangled web we weave...

Wow, it's been awhile since I last posted. I apologize; I've been pretty gosh-darn busy, and consequently I've had almost no time whatsoever to read comics or do the other various geektastic things that I tend to talk about on this blog. Things have freed up somewhat now, leaving me a little more time to do the nerdy things I enjoy so much.

And one such nerdy thing, which has also eaten up a bit of my comic reading/blogging time, is playing video games. I recently managed to acquire an XBox 360, which means that for the first time since the Sega Saturn, I own a current-generation system.

My first purchases for this new and wonderous white rectangle of joy, as you might have guessed, were Marvel: Ultimate Alliance and The Incredible Hulk, since I already knew I loved the former, and since the latter looked like it might be picking up from the spirit of Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, which is a fantastic game. I'm a little disappointed with how that turned out, but that feeling may or may not be balanced out by eventually getting to play as Hulkbuster Iron Man.

Apparently not contented with those and the half-dozen other assorted XBox games I've managed to pick up on the cheap, I went out and rented Spider-Man: Web of Shadows. You might recall that I'm a pretty big fan of the Ultimate Spider-Man game, which in my experience has had the best combination of mechanics, writing, and voice acting of any of the Spider-Man video games to date. I never got around to playing Spider-Man 3, and while I was impressed by the inclusion of the Prowler, I didn't give Spider-Man: Friend or Foe more than a single rental. I'd heard a lot of hope and hype about Web of Shadows, so I was excited to try it out and see if it'd be a worthy successor to USM.

First, the good: the game is gorgeous. New York City is huge and feels very realistic; the animation is fluid, and the character designs (with one notable exception so far) are spot-on. The action sequences are fast-paced, the combat is fluid, and the web-swinging mechanics are just about perfect (largely because they're just about the same as in USM). The storyline so far is fantastic; there's the obligatory in media res part at the beginning, and then a good, slow build-up to the main plot, with some of the usual side-quest stuff, involving the street gangs and the Kingpin. One thing I really like is that most of Spider-Man's powers work in boos battles about as well as they do in regular combat, which is a nice change of pace, since usually bosses seem to be immune to webs and various other special moves. The option to switch between the classic and black costumes, and the different powers that go with each, is fantastic. The moral system accompanying the costumes also works well with the plot and Spider-Man's character in general. The game feels very open; the only time I've encountered any problems was when I tried to go across one of the bridges while exploring early on, and hit up against an invisible wall. I haven't yet gone to see if there are other bridges in the city, but it seems to me like a Spider-Man game ought to contain a traversable bridge. It really doesn't matter which one--George Washington, Brooklyn, Queensboro--I can't tell the difference, and apparently neither could Stan Lee when Gwen Stacy was thrown off two of the three.

Now for the bad. The first thing I noticed that raised my hackles was the flash effects. Pretty much every time Spider-Man throws a punch, his hand creates little trails of light, which get bigger and brighter and more explosive as the combos increase. Last I checked, Spider-Man had not plunged his fists into Shou-Lao the Undying, and thus should not be demonstrating the iron fist--let alone the iron knee, and every other iron body part he happens to use in the game. For a game with such realistic-looking characters and landscapes, these cartoony effects really hurt the sense of immersion. I don't think I'd have noticed if they were more understated--speed lines, a flash when hits connect--or if they were limited to special moves, but it's every gosh-darn punch.

The next thing I noticed was the voice acting. Actually, that's not fair--so far, most of the voice acting is very good. Wolverine is spot-on, Venom and Black Cat were great, and even the stock phrases sound fine. Luke Cage is good, though I think my opinion is tainted by the fact that he doesn't sound like the version in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, and thus sounds a little off. No, the biggest problem with voices is Spider-Man himself, and to a lesser extent, Mary Jane. Spidey does pretty well with the humor, but otherwise he's way too whiny and high-pitched, which makes listening to him more than a little annoying. In fact, the same complaints could be levied at MJ as well, but you don't actually hear much from her, except over Peter's "hands-free cell phone." This may, again, be because I'm spoiled by previous games--Ultimate Spider-Man had pitch-perfect voice acting pretty much the whole game, so it's a little jarring to hear bad choices now.

The game is occasionally glitchy. I haven't experienced any of the freezing and restarting that the Newsarama review mentions, but early on I had to fight one enemy who was stuck below the street. Later, a cutscene played toward the end of a battle, and one of the remaining enemies turned invisible thereafter. That wouldn't have been too problematic, except that the game's targeting system stayed inexorably locked onto him until he was beaten.

That targeting system is the biggest gameplay flaw. Well, the targeting system and the camera, which are related flaws. First, targeting has a tendency to never quite lock on when you want it to. Sometimes it'll decide that what you mean to be aiming at is not the symbiote creature who is gnawing on your face, but the Kingpin squad trooper minding his own business eight blocks away. Sometimes you can change which enemy you're targeting by moving the right analog stick--something rather difficult while you're already trying to juggle your left stick, buttons, and triggers in the midst of a heated battle--and usually that results in switching to an enemy nine blocks away.

The camera, ostensibly, moves to center whichever enemy you've targeted. Sometimes it does this well; other times, it locks onto Moon Knight halfway across the city and outright refuses to be swayed in any other direction. Part of this is because the right analog stick is used to control both the camera angle and which enemy (or ally) is being targeted at any given time, and it's never the one you want when you want it to be. Not being able to see who or what I'm web-shooting at has been the single most frustrating problem of this game so far.

Especially when that problem interferes with the game's moral system. See, the moral system operates on "Red Points" (good deeds) and "Black Points" (evil deeds), which you're awarded...well, pretty much randomly, I think. As far as I can tell (since there was no manual with the rental copy) there's no way to see how many points you have in either column, even though presumably the points determine which allies you can call and what direction the plot goes in. As long as Luke Cage and Wolverine are still coming when I call, I guess I have to assume I'm still on the side of the angels. Sometimes it's easy to tell when you're doing the morally right thing--after big cutscenes, the game usually makes you explicitly choose between Red and Black, which dictates your next action and presumably results in you receiving oodles of points one way or another. When you save civilians, you get red points. When you fail to save civilians, you get black points. I really like that aspect; it seems to me to fit Spider-Man's personality to a T. There are few other heroes with moral compasses so finely tuned that they'd beat themselves up over civilians they failed to save while in pitched battle with the forces of villainy, so that much is spot-on.

After that, though, it gets a little muddy. Sometimes collateral damage gets black points, sometimes it doesn't. After awhile, there's no apparent Red Points reward for saving civilians. During the fight with Wolverine and a bunch of symbiotes, red and black points seemed to be awarded more or less randomly. There's no color point reward whatsoever for stopping crimes or other criminal activities, as far as I can see, even after the police decide Spider-Man's a menace and shoot at him as readily as the bad guys.

Ultimately, it seems that the game seems to really, really want you to show off that black suit and play as a bad guy. Only the black suit has the power to detect symbiotes-in-disguise; only the black suit gives you the power to throw cars, which the game tells you to do so that you can stun and defeat the giant mecha enemies, even though throwing a car nets you two Black Points. No Red Points are awarded, so far as I can tell, by beating the mecha with fists and webs alone. And most obnoxiously, you'll occasionally be in a battle, with the glitchy and unresponsive targeting and camera system, when you'll get a flash of blue spider-sense around your head (good luck noticing it with all the other colorful flashes in the battle), and you might notice a tiny note at the bottom of the screen about there being a civilian in danger. Once in awhile, it'll tell you more explicitly to use the Left Trigger to target the civilian and the Y or B button "while near them" to rescue them. Fail to do this, and you'll get a very clear notice that you earned 10 Black Points. Do this, and I'll hail you as the god of button-mashing, because I've only ever been able to do it through sheer dumb luck. See, things slow down a little when the civilian's car explodes, launching them into the air, but Spider-Man slows down too. Which makes it darn near impossible to right the camera, lock onto the civilian, jump up to them, and press the right button while near them in midair. And that's assuming that hitting Left Trigger actually locks onto the civilian, and not whatever the nearest bad guy you're fighting is. I realize that the evil path is supposed to be easier, but the good path shouldn't be impossible, especially not in a game centered around a superhero, and especially not just because the targeting and camera mechanics are crap. As long as your Red Points (which you ought to be able to monitor) are in the lead, targeting and camera should automatically lock onto civilians in danger, and spider-sense shouldn't slow down Spider-Man. That's the whole point of spider-sense.

On more minor notes, this game seems less diligent than previous installments in making sure that your webs are actually sticking to something as you swing around the city. After a few instances of wondering what I'd hooked onto, I've looked up to see, in fact, that Spider-Man has managed to web the sky. Perhaps in addition to acquiring the iron fist, Peter also managed to get the Power Cosmic (he presumably took over for Golden Oldie). It's a small thing, sure, but it's another contribution the game makes to killing the immersion. Besides that, there's the matter of the black suit itself. I know my "Maximum Carnage" better than most, and consequently I know that symbiotes--or at least, the Venom/black costume symbiote--are weakened and hurt by sonics, heat, microwaves, and electricity. Consequently, I find it odd that a symbiote would be able to take over Electro. Besides that, I was a little annoyed when I managed to find an in-game church tower, with a giant bell, that rings if you hit it, that did absolutely nothing to my symbiotic costume. The game was clearly made by comic geeks with a real attention to detail--the billboards advertising careers in A.I.M. and S.H.I.E.L.D. are a testament to that--so failing to include one of the most iconic scenes in the black costume's history seems like a glaring omission.

I'm sure I've missed some things, but after a review that long with a reference to Aunt May's stint as a Herald of Galactus, I feel like I've reached a good stopping point. Bottom line: I'm planning on buying the game, but I won't drop $60 on it. A good story with some great moments and decent mechanics makes Spider-Man: Web of Shadows at least worth a rental.

A little excessive

Hey, I'm still alive! And ridiculously busy. Between teaching and work and grading and writing assignments and lesson plans, and the infection I'm still recovering from, my ability to read comics has become mostly nonexistent. I'm months behind on Superman, I haven't yet cracked the JSA Annual, and the third issue of the new Ambush Bug series sits unread on my desk.

But that doesn't mean I'm not keeping up with news. Which is why I saw this:

Really? I like Stephen Colbert as much as the next guy, I watch the show when I can, I was more than a bit miffed when Joey Q decided to give Mark Gruenwald's shield to him for no apparent reason, but I thought it was kind of funny that he was still running for president in the Marvel U. But this? This really smacks of "Joe Quesada wants to get on the Report again." Look, we get it. Marvel likes Stephen Colbert. But he's not flipping Wolverine, he doesn't need to be popping up as a frigging guest star in a Spider-Man comic.

In ten, twenty years, this will look even more ridiculous and pandering than it does now. Joe Quesada, I have "The WØRD" for you: "Goody Rickels."

Big Finish does good work

By this point, you all know how I feel about Doctor Who. A few months back, when I was really starting in on the fanaticism and devouring all the Who-media I could, I listened to a retrospective on the Eighth Doctor by the Doctor Who Podshock podcast. Since Eight's only canonical appearance was in the TV movie, and since I hadn't seen much of the work of the other Doctors about whom they were reminiscing at that point, I figured I could listen knowledgeably to the show. And for the most part, I figured right--until they mentioned the Doctor Who audio plays by Big Finish Productions. Now, I generally avoid the non-canonical peripheral works that inevitably surround the shows I like; I was pretty big into Star Wars as a kid, and it bugged the hell out of me when the non-canonical stuff I liked was rendered irrelevant by the canonical stuff I didn't (e.g., Boba Fett's origin). While I would gladly watch every bit of Doctor Who I could get my hands on, while I would view Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures with nearly the same fervor as the series proper, while I would devour fansites and podcasts, I drew the line at the spin-off novels, fan films, and so forth.

But the Big Finish audio dramas represented my only chance to get more Eighth Doctor stories with Paul McGann. And I really like radio dramas. And I drive a lot, and my usual list of podcasts tends to run out fairly quickly. So I started listening to the Eighth Doctor dramas. And I've really liked them; some ("Sword of Orion") have been better than others ("Stones of Venice"), but they've really worked to solidify my positive opinion of Paul McGann's Doctor. Moreover, they've given McGann a chance to shine, which sadly the TV movie did not. I'll state it again--if there's another Doctor-lite season of the show (as there is for 2009), I'd like to see a series of episodes or specials highlighting McGann's tenure as the Doctor prior to and during the Time War. Adapting some of the audio dramas--or at least Charley, who is a fantastic companion--would make the work that much more enjoyable (and easy).

Awesome Side note: According to The Sun, some of this is sort of coming to pass, as one of next year's specials will bring McGann back during flashbacks to the Time War. I hope this paves the way for more McGann in the future (team-up!). Edit: Or maybe not, but I'm going to continue to hold out hope.

Anyway, I've recently branched out and listened to a couple of the other Doctors' shows (since I've watched more of the other Doctors' episodes and feel like I'm familiar enough to do so). Despite how much I like Peter Davison, "Loups-Garoux" left me cold. Colin Baker's "The One Doctor" was a hilarious, tongue-in-cheek exploration of the Doctor Who mythos and tropes and whatnot. And while that one surprised me with its quality yesterday, I think I have a new favorite.

Because "The Chimes of Midnight" is incredible. It's creepy on the level of "Midnight" and "The Empty Child," it's poignant in a fashion similar to "Forest of the Dead," it plays with time in interesting ways like "Blink," and it's just a very well-written, well-put-together, fantastic Doctor Who story. It's not just "good for an audio play," it's one of my favorite Doctor Who stories--visual or otherwise. Up there with "Blink" and "City of Death." I recommend it to anyone--though you have to at least listen to "Storm Warning" first, since it introduces Charley and some of the plot elements. It's fantastic, fantastic, fantastic, and I hope it represents a general improvement rather than a statistical fluke.

The wait until Christmas--punctuated though it is with Sarah Jane Adventures--has just gotten an awful lot shorter. With Doctor Who on disc at home and on the iPod in the car, I'll be able to satisfy my cravings whenever I want. And I encourage the rest of you to do the same--at the very least, the Eighth Doctor deserves more than the TV movie.

Real Life Rick-roll

So, I was listening to my iPod on the way to lunch today. It was on shuffle, and as I pulled into the parking lot, it started playing Rick Astley's classic "Never Gonna Give You Up." This was not a particularly uncommon occurrence--it's only a 2GB iPod. No, the strange thing was when I walked into Subway and the same song was playing on the radio over the restaurant's speakers. The only way it could have been eerier is if it had started in the same place where I paused the iPod.

Anyway, crazy stuff.

Crossposted here.

Going through popstars' closets

At this point, we all know that Natasha Bedingfield has a Pocketful of Sunshine. Here is an incomplete list of other containers she possesses which happen to be full of light:

• A handbag full of moonbeams
  
• A fanny-pack full of stardust
  
• A backpack full of plasma
  
• A coinpurse full of bioluminescence
  
• A sporran full of incandescence
  
• A rolled-up shirtsleeve full of firelight
  
• A pair of Roos with zipper-pouches full of magnesium flare

Supermonth: Never-Ending

So, over the double-sized Supermonth, I managed to get out almost a month's worth of Superman posts. I didn't quite get to everything I wanted, and real life got in the way a little (computer issues, money issues, traveling, and I just started student teaching and working again), but it's time to bring Supermonth to a close. Which isn't to say that I'm done with Superman posting in the foreseeable future, by any means. I still plan on getting to the last post or two in the video game series, and I've got a stack of old Superman comics awaiting review on my desk, plus an essay on Mr. Mxyzptlk's character development and a few notes about how much I wish "Smallville" were more like "Superboy." There's more than a month worth of the Man of Steel, and I think I've drawn out his 70th birthday celebration long enough. Thanks for sticking around!