I picked up Conan the Barbarian #1 by Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan. I will admit, the only reason I was at all interested in it is that I’m a huge Brian Wood fan, and both of his other big monthlies, DMZ and Northlanders, were ending and I didn’t want to stop reading his work. I had never read any stories about Conan and the only experience with the character was the movies with Arnold. In some ways, I’m glad I got to wait for this treatment of the Conan story.
This comic tells the beginning to the story of “The Queen of the Black Coast“, a rather notorious Conan story that concerns Conan’s exploits as a pirate with a woman named Belit. It’s one of the few that deal with lust rather than greed. I hadn’t heard of the story before this, but am very interested to see what Brian Wood does with it. Already there
Becky Cloonan’s art has been a revelation. I tend to enjoy in my comics a bit more gritty style than her style appears to be on the surface. It reminds me a lot of Saturday morning cartoons with bold lines and dark lines around most characters. However, on closer inspection you see the detail she puts into each frame. There are some closeups of Conan in which we see the stubble of hard days on the road and sweat of the hot desert city he is in. The art style ultimately proves effective because it is a story of young Conan, before he has seen all that he has seen. In fact, this story tells of one of the moments that turn him into the hardened adventurer to come.
I’ll give it 4 1/2 stars out of 5, mostly because this comic was stage setting. I imagine when I look back on this comic after the 25 comic book run of this story, I’ll be giving it 5 stars.
Interested? Previews available at Comic Book Resources, as well as a “commentary track” with Brian Wood.
No, not that Matt Christopher, ratherthe one who wrote The Tripod Trilogy and the The Prince in Waiting Trilogy, as well as other sci-fi books, is dead. I’d love to play a D&D game inspired by the Prince in Waiting, which was essentially fantasy set in the far future after some apocalyptic event has occurred. I was already leaning towards sci-fi in 6th grade when I discovered these series Even now, I try to sprinkle little bits of a long ago civilization that appears to have a higher technology level than the current civilizations.
Thanks to grognardia for the heads up.
Filed under Uncategorized
As I haven’t had much of a chance to game lately, I’ve been reading a lot of comic books. Here are some of the current books on the shelf that have got me excited.
Here’s what I’ve been reading:
The Flash
The writing is decent, but the artwork is unbelievable. They use some amazing framing and pacing to show the realization of the extent of Flashes power
JLA
Man, the first story in the New DC universe is great. Green Lantern is cocky, Flash just wants to do the right thing, Superman is slightly unhinged. Fun stuff.
Secret Avengers
Warren Elis has written what is perhaps the best comic book time travel story I have ever read in #20. Did the Widow change history, or just recreate it?
Aquaman
I know what you’re thinking, Aquaman? But this is one of the best comics I’ve read in a while. A policeman at the end of the first story says to Aquaman, “We’ll be sure to mention that you helped to the media, Aquaman.” Ouch. Great characterization from Geoff Johns. Aquaman is a tough superhero, but everyone thinks of him as being kind of helpless and lame. Really enjoying it so far.
Filed under comics
I have my facebook account and my iPhone, and it’s hard to ignore zynga-type games. In fact, I have two such games on my phone, Words with Friends and Chess with Friends and for a while I was playing Heroes of Neverwinter. Still, I haven’t played the -ville games from Zynga, but I have been reading a number of interesting articles about these type of games, the effects of them, and the actions of the major companies towards smaller game developers.
The first is about the game Cowclicker, from December, but I just had a chance to read it. Cowclicker was/is a facebook game that involves exactly what the name implies it would: you click on cows. That’s it. Oh, and you try to get your friends to click on them as well. One quote described the game as a very obvious “skinner box“. After reading the article, it made me wish I had gotten in on the game before all the cows went away. And then that thought made me sad.
The second set of articles is about how Zynga and others appear to have stolen a game design from another company while making a bingo game. And before that, Zynga ripped off Tiny Tower. Oh, and Spry Fox is suing 6waves, a company it had been in negotiations with, over 6waves blatantly copying their game.
Is there any other non-zynga games out there to play scrabble like games and chess with friends? And anyone want to try and convince the 50 friends I have on words with friends to switch?
Filed under computer games
Back in the day, young Matty liked to read zines. Mainly ones by Al Burian. Now, there seems to be a zine renaissance in the RPG world, initiated by Christian. Now, we have a new zine on the scene.
Zogorion is a mini-adventure published in zine format. I hadn’t heard of the creator before, but based on the pictures of the zine, I’m excited.
I’ll make sure to review the zine once it arrives, but for the first time in a while I’m going to be excited to be checking my mailbox everyday.
I’m going to have to get on this zine making trend. I’ve got plenty of time these days, so we’ll have to see if I can find the time to put something together.
Filed under Zines
