Greetings from the New Initiate
When Chris Sims extended an offer to joining Critical-Hits a while back, I was intrigued. I liked the site, and its reputation as a good group of people who usually stay positive about games (but while remaining honest about their opinions). My existing blog, while mostly about gaming, didn’t cleave strictly to D&D discussions. Or at least I didn’t plan for it to always do so. Also, I’ve made a long tradition of following in Chris Sims’s footsteps ever since I became an editor on D&D shortly after he did, so here was another chance.
So I made the switch and became part of a larger whole. The advantages are tremendous, and I look forward to being a part of the Critical-Hits community. But I wasn’t sure where to start. What would my first topic be? I knew I wanted to switch over before Gen Con, so I could tell people where to find my stuff. Maybe I’d start it off with another installment of my 4E Success or Failure series. That seemed like a strong way to go.
But then I ended up securing a professional badge to San Diego Comic-Con when they got some badge returns, and was suddenly about to fly off to California. So what better way to kill two birds with one stone than to cover the convention, giving C-H something new and introducing myself by showing the readers what I care about in the gaming/geek sphere. So join me over the next few days while I see the sights at San Diego Comic-Con 2010. Expect late posts, though. I’ll be busy!
Uncle Vanir’s Jedi Jamboree
I’ve had the pleasure lately of being the “cool uncle” as far as my 6-year-old nephew is concerned. Ever since about a year ago, his wandering interests have, for the most part, been something I’m either directly interested in, or at least knowledgeable about. At first, it was Star Wars. Ever since I met my wife, my in-laws have tagged me as a nerd, and that meant I would want Star Wars stuff for any present-giving occasion. (While sometimes tiresome, this assumption is usually correct. ) When my nephew turned 5, he started to watch the Clone Wars cartoons (the new CGI ones, not the utterly brilliant Genndy Tartakovsky series from 2003), and he started watching the other movies and getting interested in Everything Star Wars Ever. And so, every time I’d visit, a thousand questions would be waiting for me. At first, it was just things like “hey Uncle Matt, who’s your favorite Jedi”, but he soon figured out I was familiar with most of the names of the vehicles (in the original trilogy, anyway), and he’d describe things he’d seen in the movie and I’d try to decipher what he was talking about and tell him the names. [Read the rest of this article]
Comic Books, Franchises & Reboots Oh My!
Allow me to take you on a small adventure through my life of the last few months. With more spare time than I’ve had in the last six years and a cornucopia of neglected hobbies crying out for attention, trying to choose what to do next can be rather difficult. Between getting back into Warhammer and dedicating more time to my D&D campaign I’ve found that reading my varied library of comic books is one of the most enjoyable ways to spend my time. So far I’ve revisited the incredible Hush storyline in Batman and a long run of Daredevil written by Brian Michael Bendis for the Marvel Knights imprint. As a result of this I have also started keeping up a bit more with current comics online and I have to say I’m immediately disappointed in what’s been done.
I stopped buying comics shortly after Marvel’s Civil War crossover that piggybacked directly from the House of M crossover, and the best that I can tell is Marvel hasn’t stopped with crossovers since. Obviously as a child of the 80’s I have some romanticized concept that a crossover is something done only rarely and to be treated as a special event. I imagine the original charm of the crossover was the interaction of different heroes and intellectual properties, but in this day and age when characters like Daredevil, Spiderman, and (for the love of god) Wolverine are regular members of the Avengers I feel that the crossover has lost nearly all of its unique appeal. Guest starring characters and teamwork are so prevalent that the crossover can easily be seen as simple money making schemes by the comic book companies. [Read the rest of this article]
YouTube Tuesday: I Am Super Lucky Golden Iron Man Edition
Test animation for an Iron Man anime, the final of which is to be written by Warren Ellis. Below, a similar test animation for the Wolverine anime, also to be written by Ellis, but that doesn’t look nearly as good. [Read the rest of this article]
YouTube Tuesday: In Brightest Day, and Blackest Pony Edition
Two fake but epic trailers for existing properties: above, the My Little Pony movie trailer that takes a different tact than you might expect, and below, a Green Lantern trailer that puts the emerald ring on the capable hands of Nathan Fillion. [Read the rest of this article]
Marvel's X-Men Movie Mistakes
Stemming from some of the comments on Darth Cthulhu’s ‘controversial’ Star Trek post, I started thinking about the first X-Men movie and its relation to the rest of the franchise now that X-Men Origins: Wolverine is out. One commentor related the first X-Men movie, Ironman, and the first Spiderman to Star Trek as examples that the villain doesn’t need to be developed because the focus is on the origin story. I actually think those are bad examples because the only one that focuses on a team of characters like Star Trek is X-Men, which happens to have a very well developed and interesting villain. In fact, the opening scene of the whole movie is focused on that villain as it shows Magneto’s childhood motivation for being the kind of person that he is.
That’s when it hit me, the first X-Men movie is really only about two main characters – Magneto and Wolverine. That’s also when I realized the first two X-Men Origin movies that Marvel (Edit: actually Fox is more to blame, my bad) is working on for those exact same characters. I think this is where Marvel really took a turn towards running an excellent franchise into the ground, with considerations of how good or bad (mostly bad) X-Men 3 really was put aside. I believe we got enough of these two characters in the first and second movies, and that focusing on them for a set of origin based feature films is really overkill to the whole thing. [Read the rest of this article]
YouTube Tuesday: Spin Kick vs. Repulsor Edition
Just a quick, well done stop motion video of Bruce Lee fighting Iron Man.
Preview: Ranged Warlord
When preview material for the 4th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons first started to come out, what excited me the most was probably the addition of the Warlord class. The Races & Monsters preview book described the class alongside pictures of armored warriors covered in weapons (both melee and ranged), shouting orders and pointing out tactics to their allies. When 4e was finally released the Warlord class was extremely interesting and very new, but completely lacked that “Weapons Master” feel that I had really wanted to associate with the concept. In fact, it had no ranged attacks or abilities at all.
It wasn’t until late last year when I found a post by Wyatt on his blog detailing rules for a ranged Warlord build, and I found myself thinking it could definitely be presented as a great add-on to the core rules. So that’s exactly what I set out to do, and today I present to you a preview of the first three levels of our Ranged Warlord!
These rules were originally written entirely by Wyatt from Spirits of Eden, but I liked it so much I asked for his permission to take his ideas and run with them. In the end I worked to edit them, balance them against the core rules, and format them so that they fit in with the other rules provided for 4th Edition. Then I ran everything by Wyatt and received his blessing on it. If you’re as excited as I am to try it out, please use these rules here as a playtest. We welcome all feedback on it and are definitely curious how it stands up during play. The rules presented here are still a work in progress: the final build will include powers all the way up to level 30 (excluding utility powers because the existing ones are just as useful for a ranged warlord as they are for the melee builds), as well as possibly a few paragon paths to go along with the ranged concept. The full build should be released in the next two months, but if I hear a lot of good feedback and encouragement I just might finish it sooner!
–
Backrow Commander Warlord
Your leadership takes the form of quick commands, cunning strategy, bold action and tactical superiority – but not from the front lines. Behind your allies, or close to them, you observe the battlefield with your sharp wits and quick reflexes, seeing through your enemy’s tactics and finding the flaw that can shatter them. [Read the rest of this article]
Inq. of the Week: Who Watched the Watchmen?
We wanted to know the order of operations when a book becomes a movie. The answer was pretty clear with 65% of you saying: read the book, then see the movie. This is a philosophy I certainly support, but it doesn’t always happen, even in cases where I’m told just how much better the book is than the movie.
However, in the case of the Watchmen, I read the book, oh, at least 20 times before seeing the movie. It helps that they came out over 20 years apart (though as Chatty pointed out after reading my review, I was 3 when the original came out, so my experience is even different than the diehards who had read it when it first came out).
My sense when it was being advertised, and especially after seeing it, is that the movie is something of a tough sell. It’s long, it’s R rated, and it’s fairly high concept as far as movies with this kind of advertising budget go. Early box office receipts are panning that out, and I’m not confident in its word of mouth to those who aren’t fans of the original.
Regardless of how the movie does overall, I’m interested how our audience feels about the movie, and also I want to know:
Loading ...
Watchmen…
…is to become Saturday morning cartoon… !?
Watchmen is a serious, serious bit of graphic novel, even with meta-powered individuals populating its story. Written by psychedelically charged soul-delver Alan Moore, it is a seminal piece of literature, and I might almost be excited to see them release a movie of it this week. But I can’t believe it’s going to be made into a saturday morning cartoon, for f’s sake.
link: see a sneak preview of the saturday morning cartoon opening credits.
I’m just kidding, just some dude taking a piss, but a quite good spoof if you have read it and watched cartoons as a child. If you haven’t? Well go do it. It’s at home. Scott has it. Borrow it from him.
Let me give my shout-out to Marc Nathan at Cards, Comics & Collectibles in Reisterstown, who turned me on to this and many other substantial pieces of graphic literature.
(embedded a YouTube version for ease of play as well -Ed)
