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I admit, the idea of a new “Barda” focused Story is intriguing

For one thing, a Barda-Only Story where Barda gets her hands on the Onyx Sword from Gods and Monsters and jumping universes to meet the somewhat criminal Superman of that earth would make for a cool comic.

The Premise is fun, there was an anomaly at the Source Remnant on New Genesis. The Source Remnant has this sword hilt in it, when grabbed the MotherBox like tech in the sword activates and tells Barda a secret way into this alternate universe. It also tells her that in this alternate Scott Free is a strong and powerful warrior.

You set up that she needs “Scott Free” from Gods and Monsters Universe to donate some blood for Local Mister Miracle because his time on Apokolips robbed him of something from his diet that every child on New Genesis gets. Subsequently an organ is shutting down.

Barda has to get a sample and reading from “Bad Scott Free” to save her husband, strangely the sword “Wants to Go Home”

An RPG in “The Matrix”

Back in the late 90s and Early 2000s, before there was a Matrix Sequel or even “The Animatrix” there was just “The Matrix” and what we knew about the world of it from that first movie. It was full of the promise that “anyone” could be have super powers in the Matrix and that all it took was being “shown the way”

Well, I took that idea and ran with it. The Premise [in the RPG] was that a famous former Superman actor had received cutting edge nano-tech treatments for his spinal injury, allowing him to walk again and the tech became widely available to the point that humans commonly had enhancements to their bodies. This led to a singularity of humanity and machine where machine intelligence was born and became independent from human intelligence.

Machines had typically been slaves to humans and humanity (for the most part) wanted that to continue, but the Machines had their own goals, emotions and needs now. They were a new mode of being, purely software in any shell they could imagine. It was wonderful for the new machines, but humanity was envious of the freedom of the machine children and war broke out and “the plot of the Matrix” happened.

I don’t recall where the idea of multiple Matrixes came from, but the premise was that the “real world” in the Movie was less desolate, but that humanity was pushed mostly to “the moon” and the war between Humanity and the Machines had pushed those with the resources to do it to leave earth for the “the moon” and so Humans had to hold orbital launch stations at the poles to allow for resources to be dropped to the core.

Also, “The Matrix” that we saw in the Movie was just “That Matrix” and there were others, some with Magic, Some with Superheroes, Some with Cowboys, the premise being the GM could set the story in a Matrix with rules they could set and give the players different things to do other than “Be Neo”

I ended up scrapping it, especially after the other movies came out, I changed the title to “The Sequence” after the initial code snippet that “turned on” Machine intelligence and left it to lie

I don’t even know what happened to the manuscript at this point, it’s somewhere on a disk.

I did get it printed and bound though, since I had access to the means, along with a book of poems I wrote while working the phones for “Teh Nortons”

The Solar Farms

Alright, so this is a pitch for a story at DC about Superman using the Kryptonian propensity for Energy Storage as a way to grew and sell living beings as batteries.

So the setting is like this.  Centuries before Krypton was poisoned and Kryptonians could still leave the planet without special aids a “Tropey” Grey Alien is found kidnapping Kryptonians of every station and house.  The Grey Alien ignores their indignation, some of them talk about a truce or an agreement with “the Grey” and the Alien just turns away and proceeds to stretch them on a medical device to the point they call out in pain and several devices appear from arms around them and extract matter from every part of them.  They scream or complaint, the Grey looks on dispassionately, gesturing to a machine that displays “memory alteration” and we see the Kryptonian returned to where they presumably came from, like they had stumbled or had a bad dream.

Earth, START LABS YEAR CURRENT -5 a scientist has been sequencing Kryptonian DNA from samples from Superman when he has been de-powered here and there (they are all over the place if you look!) and has determined that while cloning a perfect copy is out of the question due to handwaved technology limits for the story.  Buuut, there is the possibility that they could tease out a few features of Kryptonian Physiology, namely the ability to absorb and retain solar energy in order to use that stored energy to “Dealers Choice of Supermans Powers”  only one power at a time, but you could potentially be super strong, or have eye blasts, or something, but there’s no way to control it.

So we’ve set up two threads.

Somewhere in Sector 7821 Green Lantern Grtan of The Osmis Cluster runs into a space cruiser stuck in a null sector, a sector of space with a negative infraction ratio it absorbs light like a black hole.  It has shut down the craft.  On investigation the Green Lantern digs in the bowels of the craft and discovers a humanoid baby inside a massive solar reactor,.  Grtan ignites their ring and orders it to create a stable yellow sun radiation field.  At which point the child appears to swell as it absorbs the light, slowly at first and eventually to a grotesque extent, until it’s flesh touches a contact point on the reactor and THE REACTOR LIGHTS!!!

The craft explodes from the Null sector, the Green Lanterns corpse is expelled from the craft by an unseen person and the spacecraft zooms into the stars, leaving Grtan floating in space.  A ring distress signal summons “Dealers Choice Green Lantern” who takes Grtan to a nearby planet.

 

STAR labs has some test subject, animals that have been given one each of Superman’s powers, so they have a dog that can fly and horse that can stomp and cause damage and a cat that is VERY fast, but it has to be coated in a special suit because it keeps tearing it’s fur out. Jimmy Olsen comes across a mouse that seems to be able to find treats no matter where they are hidden, and discovers a tattoo on it that leads back to start labs. The little mouse escaped the lab (because it has Superman’s prodigious senses) and so it was able to navigate to the open air where Jimmy Found it and snatched it up and “saved it” from being stomped on by a passerby.

So we have two threads, Earth Scientists are using Superman’s Genetics to create potential weapons and the Grey who has turned Kryptonian Clones into batteries.

Neat!

Legions of Things

It took what seemed like years to finish “Watch Dogs: Legion” and literal Years for me to sit down and finish “Legion” from Marvel Television and I didn’t plan it, but I finished them both the same night.

Watchdogs: Legion is the continuation of the series started with “Watchdogs”, continued in “Watchdogs 2: Silicon Valley Monsters!” and now “Watchdogs: Legion” and I think this latest edition might have finally figured out the formula for the games, and that is to not have a primary character.

“Watchdogs: Legion” is (like the previous games and pretty much every Ubisoft game) an open world with a bunch of stuff to do while following a main mission. The “twist” for WD:Legion is that you can recruit “anyone” to join your fight. Including “bad guys” which is really where the game play system shines, you recruit someone, do a couple missions (sadly repetitive ones) and they join your team. All you can customize is their clothes, and the clothes and “battle mask” (my name, but you put it on to fight so “battle mask”) The main plot takes FOREVER to get through, there were what seemed like over 100 plot missions to get through and who you embody (the operative) matters, so choose your team wisely! I had a blast in the game, but the writing was kind of weak for the main plot, I had it sussed out in the first cinematic so I spent the whole game waiting for what I saw coming in the first minutes of the game. Which is sad, but there are only so many plots in the world and when it looked like I was going to be wrong, I was intrigued, but the mystery the game does a masterful job setting up really doesn’t “matter” in the game, you had to seek it out and the payoff isn’t great storytelling, but it *is* good world building, I think they were going to go somewhere else and left in the bits. I’m tiptoeing around the plot details as i don’t want to spoil it for anyone. The game is good, I WANTED to finish it, so yeah.

LEGION (from Marvel TV) WAS great, but I think they had wanted to go in a direction and had to swap motivations around a bit to make drama and it all got very “Manson with Powers” and if I’m honest, they went all cosmic, they didn’t need to ground so much of it after that.

What I loved: Behind Blue eyes!
What I hated: Problematic Protagonist and a heel turn that wasn’t

Review: Crossed 9 Limping to the End

Ten Issues of growing dread and uncertainty.

Something like two years of waiting to see what happens; to maybe understand why.

I know we will probably never see a “why” in “The Walking Dead”  because that would mean an ending and why stop riding that cash cow, huh?

At least we knew Crossed would have an ending; and I imagine there are some who read it only to see it end and not be left out when their other (in their minds) more “fucked up” friends finished reading it.  I kept wanting to know where we would be going, I had imagined for a while that the narrator was the kid and that this future history was about how the main character would become one of the crossed and then hunt him.

Instead, when you look at it again through the lens of this issue you see what the crossed is really about.  In every issue we meet a so-called clean person or group who is doing the very thing that the crossed, the MONSTERS are doing.   Cannibal Children, homosexual rape and murder, casual cruelty to the less powerful.  All there for us, and it wasn’t laid bare until the end.  The Crossed is (and always was about “the clean ones)  the Crossed is about the sickness that pervades us and we don’t treat it as such, at least when one of them has that big mark on their face one can easily separate the monsters from the innocents.  By the end though; are there any innocents left?

This last issue caps the Horsecock story and addresses the issue of the Crossed’ level of intelligence, placing them somewhere in the clever toddler level with a mean streak a mile wide and a complex reasoning ability that lets them… I won’t give away more about this issue itself.  I’m kind of glad this is over.

Where Black Gas covered much the same ground in terms of action on the page, Mr. Ennis and Mr. Burrows have attempted; I think, to elevate the message above the medium.  These things exist, they are here already and if you don’t confront them, you are as much to blame as they are themselves.

Review: Walking Dead Issue 70 – Old Rick vs New Rick

It’s been what?  Five years now since Rick was smacked on the head with a shovel while prowling outside his own home.

Did you ever get the idea that Rick died right there an then and the rest of “The Walking Dead” has been some kind of melodramatic Hell? A Purgatory for Rick who woke up after the world had ended but didn’t move on with his family.

I’m beginning to think that if it isn’t; perhaps now it’s time to just end the thing.

All of the twists have been turned; kids have been eaten.  Babies blown to bits by shotguns; rapists roam freely.

If Robert Kirkman hasn’t been describing Hell, he’s bound to be close.

The Walking Dead 70 drops the remaining survivors in what appears to be a safe town; and I say that with all the foreboding we should just expect now.  There is no safe town for Rick and crew, right?  The series can’t possibly just become a day-to-day about surviving comfortably… right?

If this panel doesn’t set off your “Oh shit that kid is getting beat at home alarm” then you haven’t been reading this comic.  Yeah, and uh, that is rick now.  He must be hungry all the time now.

Nothing plot wise goes down in this issue; however as there hasn’t been a real plot since the end of the Governor plot-line why should that matter?  I think I continue to read this comic just to find out what happens in the end.  Please, Rob, End this soon.

Review: Crossed Seven, the Crossed love Musicals and Murder

Crossed7_1-HorseCockRevue

Horsecock and crew return and while singing about how much they love rape, Ennis and Burrows take the Crossed to a whole new level of “Rob zombie villain” because really, that is all the Crossed appear to be now.  “The Firefly Family” as a communicable disease.   The Manson Malaise if you will.

Our Band of survivors continue on their way, running from Equine Penis and his band of Rapist Meth-Heads, who stopped for a bite to eat along the way.

Crossed7_2-DinnerTime

Yeah, we know they are cannibals and all, but look how happy this guy is, you might call him a Happy Meal, if you were into puns.  I’m not, but that is one gleeful dinner right there.

The Survivors don’t get far enough away and are forced to take matters in hand:

Crossed7_3-ShootingGallery

Like many of these stories, showing up after the party with guns doesn’t really go their way.  I’ll leave it to you to read the issue and find out why.

Crossed continues to be the Gross Out Apocalypse that it promised to be but the long lag between issues almost led to me missing this one.  I may even give up on it until a Trade appears, because it IS entertaining and compelling, but hard to keep an eye on.  Burrows and Ennis continue to deliver a horrifying world, much worse than say “the Walking Dead” without the need to kill off the major cast (I know its only seven issues in, but with the lag, its on par with the Walking Dead in terms of distance of time between tradgedies)

It’s sparse and horrible, when does issue 8 come out?

Walking Dead 65 – Bring it

WalkingDead65-ComeAloneFinally things look up for Rick and his Crew (except for Dale, he’s boned)

Issue 65 Opens with the Survivors holed up in a church after being attacked from the tree line outside.  Needless to say Rick is pissed off and ready to spit bullets.

Rightly so.  It’s been about 4 weeks maybe 6 since his wife was killed by the governer and his men.  Rick has been on the edge of really dangerous for a while now.

Issue 65 leaves us wondering if maybe he has stepped over the edge, (not really)

WalkingDead65-DaleAndreaIt’s been a while since Dale was bit, shouldn’t he have turned by now?

Speaking of which, if infected meat doesn’t turn you, doesn’t that mean that the “fairly fresh” dead are a good source of iron?

Yum, wandering Long Pig Sashimi!

This is a good issue, but it is over so quickly I’m about ready to chew the pages.

Amateur Super Heroics sometimes involve nightsticks

Kickass01-NoWaytoStart

This is no way to get things going if you are going to pick up Amateur Super Heroics.  In fact, I might suggest that this looks like total failure.  This is the climax of issue one of Kick Ass (soon to be a major motion picture in theaters from Lions’ Gate).  The basic plot isn’t really that much, no real motivations except heroics (maybe dead mommy issues) and the desire to do something.  The “real” world has a share of the “Duff Man” styled super heroes running around being fat in tights.  Kick Ass looks to say “those are the posers, this is what happens when you really want to do something”

Things improve for our protagonist by issue two:

Kickass02-Better

I can’t say I was really into Kick Ass when it first came out, I had a full plate of Invincible and other standard superheroes and “alternate superheroics” (The Boys, Black Summer, Etc) do read.  So when Kick Ass wasn’t right there for me to read, I missed a few issues and then forgot about it.    It was violent and gritty, but “The Boys” showed superheropes getting their orbits cracked by a little scottish Simon Pegg.  How could Kick Ass compete?  A Movie is a good start.

The Intro seems to mirror the first pages of the Comic and the extended trailers looks REALLY amazing and the clips convinced me of Nic Cages commitment to the material.  It looks like Kick Ass will be setting the “Violent as a Japanese Guro Horror” bar for 2010, but really, I hope it’s not just ridiculous violence like Machine Girl or Tokyo Gore Police.