Andrew Dobson, skilled artist and Nintendo fan of old, gives his take on Project Natal and the Sony Wand in “Danny and Spot” (I’m showing you two comics that were uploaded together, but it’s the second comic that’s relevant here.) Check out his amazing work at the link above!

Fall has, uh, fallen upon us here at the Casa de Marlink, according to the bright red tree outside our door. Halloween rushed in and blew out with the speed and force of six three-year-olds on a sugar high, leaving us with just the leftovers of candy for trick-or-treaters, decorations to be taken down*, and some form of minor plague that some generous soul donated to the big Halloween party.

*Decorations were left up into November to ensure we did not incur the wrath of Sam by taking them down too early.

While I soothe my aching head and raw throat with honeyed ginseng tea, let’s get down to brass tacks. Or thumbtacks. Who even uses brass tacks anymore?

You might notice this isn’t the monthly webcomic review I’ve normally been doing the first Tuesday of the month, although a comic on the Web still makes a feature here. I’m switching up the way things are done, but since how a writer works is only of interest to the writer, I’ll spare you the details and get to the topic at hand. Well, topics. I’m gonna get random and complain about a few things here. This post was inspired by the Dobson comics you see here and the gripes they reminded me of.

This isn’t NEW-news; we’ve all heard that the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 are keen on adding motion controls to their systems. The response from the gaming community so far has largely been a big yawning “Meh.” My, the enthusiasm of disapproval sure has fallen since Nintendo announced the Wii Remote a few years back! (Read the “2006″ panel of the above comic to see the reaction I got a few years ago, when I expressed delight at the proposed Nintendo motion controls that have since come to rule the world.)

But, even though I posted a comic here that’s mocking the Wiimote-mockers, I’m not going to tread…too much…into that old territory of how it’s “cool” to hate the big N because they always seem to come out on top (funny, I would think that would be a reason to LIKE them. We’re supposed to like winners who provide quality products for the consumer, right? Or maybe I’m the only one who still values substance over style. Wait. Said I wasn’t gonna go there. I also said I’d call you after last night. Get used to disappointment, kids.) No, my problem with the gamer-dubbed “copycat” motion technology announced by Sony and Microsoft isn’t relevant to the “copycat” part.

We don’t have a 360 in this house, due to there being nothing we wanted to play on it. We do have a PS3, which I pretty much only use as a DVD/Blu-Ray player. I spend basically all of my gaming time on the PC, the Wii, or my older Nintendo systems (and much of my PC gaming is playing Nintendo ROM’s when I’m not playing Oblivion). It’s not that I’m just obsessed with everything Nintendo does to the point that I won’t touch the competition. It’s that I’m obsessed with Nintendo BECAUSE they produce the games I actually like to play and replay, an area in which both Sony and Microsoft have been severely lacking for me. Let’s have another set of Dobson comics to illustrate:

Before anyone says anything, A Boy and His Blob falls under the “third-party” category, not the “new intellectual property” one.

Yeah, I’m not a big first-person shooter fan, nor am I diggin’ the dull “realistic” brown graphics that make backgrounds and items largely indistinguishable and have become the gaming norm. Don’t think I’m ignoring that Nintendo has been known to fall into this trap too (Twilight Princess, why you gotta hurt me so bad with your muted colours? Can’t we go back to the vibrant pallets of your NES and SNES glory days when I could tell one object from another? Even your N64 forays were more vivid!) And many of the PS3 FPS offerings are pretty much all the same thing, graphics-/gameplay-wise. Even the rare stand-out FPS games like Call of Duty: World at War and Battlefield: Bad Company tend to look alike…and play alike in a bad way, which I’ll get into and ties into the motion-control thing….

I can’t comment on the 360’s proposed motion controls beyond quoting a few gamer responses of “Way to do what Nintendo already did!” since I’ve never played a 360, but I’ve got a big problem with Sony’s take. Which is, how can PS3 developers be looking at new types of controls when the ones they’ve been working with for years are still so loose and unresponsive?

There aren’t that many PS3 games I’ve been excited for and actually played. There was Metal Gear Solid 4 (more brown futuristic FPS with a scruffy hero!), Eden, LittleBigPlanet, and the minigame LocoRoco Cocoreccho!, and that’s pretty much it. And I probably would have liked those games a whole lot more, had the controls actually freakin’ worked.

The battle against Vamp in MGS4, for example, took about five times as long as it should have because the CQC maneuver to put someone in a lock-hold only works when it wants to. And let’s not forget the other times during the game that Snake wouldn’t grab what he was supposed to or go where he was told. (Cranky old man.)

In Eden, the controls work like you’re playing underwater with slow response time, which leaves your little character missing easy grab-jumps and constantly falling to the beginning of the level while the timer ticks down. I can generally only play one level at a time, before getting so frustrated at the controls that I quit playing it for the next two months.

LittleBigPlanet…do I even need to get into the controls and hit detection that are so sloppy, even the game’s designers admit there’s something amiss–and then completely reneged on their promise to repair the broken controls by Christmas 2008? I have tried so hard to love this game with all my heart because it’s extremely unique and obviously a labour of love (see also: Stephen Fry narrating), but it’s another one that leads to migraines. I still recommend to friends that they play this game–but as a rental. I can’t justify buying it until you’ve seen if you can love it despite the crappy controls.

LocoRoco…another game that would be so creative and so much fun, if only the damn LocoRocos actually did what they were told, instead of bouncing in place and ogling the pretty butterfly that is clearly telling them to jump on each other and form a stack. Many friends have seen this game on the PS3 and wanted to try it, only to give up after ten minutes of yelling at the screen and shaking the controller.

Ever since the PS3 entered my home, I’ve had this theory that game developers aren’t making games harder–they’re making games harder to play. (Or perhaps making the games themselves “stupider” so that they don’t recognize what you, the player, are trying to do with that weird little alien “controller” thing your PS3 has heard so much about.) And there’s a big difference between the two. People like a challenge. People don’t like watching themselves fail even though they hit the right button at the right time. If developers can’t get regular old button-dominated controls to work as they should, how can they expect to re-revolutionize gaming with a new(ish, *ahem* Nintendo) type of control? Do me a favour, Sony. Get the old right before you move on to the new. Make me love you, as Nintendo made me love them over two decades ago, and continues to make me love them, by getting it right the first time. And Microsoft? At least try to catch my interest next time, okay?

I now end this largely nonsensical ventilation to pop pills for the headache and more tea for the throatache. Catch you on the flip–or catch you at Nekocon this weekend for those who are going, provided I’m not dying of the zombie plague by then!

Here’s a little review of a different kind. Just read–the eyes you save could be your own. (I apologize for NOTHING there.)

Having gone nearly three years without glasses after the tragic demise of my old pair, I was pretty well out of patience with having to stick in my contacts every time I needed to drive five minutes to the grocery store or wanted to watch TV. Unfortunately, I couldn’t pay the several hundred dollars a new pair would cost me. I’d heard good things about the website Zenni Optical over the years, but wasn’t too sure about buying from them. I mean…glasses, frames AND lenses, for as little as $8.00 a pair from some place on the Internet? My last pair of glasses clocked in at a cool $400 (my eyes are short-bus special). How good could glasses that cost me less than my favourite sushi lunch really be?

The short answer is, “Really damn good.”

The longer answer is, “Even better than the pair that cost me four hundred kicks to the clams!”

A month ago, I finally gave in to the burning desire to own a good pair of glasses, and also gave into the equally burnariffic urge to NOT pay $400 for them. So I hit up Zenni-land, and was pretty impressed right away at what I had to choose from. So much so, actually, that I ended up with two pairs, one costing a sweet base cost of $8.00, and the other $9.95. My wonky prescription, which my old optometrist’s glasses office claimed they’d have to charge extra for? No problem! was Zenni’s stance, and my credit card and I rejoiced. I sprang an extra $4.95 for the anti-reflection coating on each pair, the lenses came with free anti-scratch coating and UV shielding, and the shipping was $4.95–a flat rate no matter how many glasses you order. I passed on the offer of polarized clip-on shades since I already have a pair of polarized sunglasses I wear over my regular glasses. My grand total for two pairs of eye-saving love? $32.80. Suck on that, $400 glasses! You’re no longer welcome in my life.

The glasses arrived about two weeks later, and I was thrilled with them out of the package. They were much smaller and lighter than my old pair, made of titanium (my former pair was made of a heavy bulky metal because I was told my lenses were too thick to be supported by lighter materials). After a day or so of my ears and nose getting used to the fact that there was something on them, it felt like I wasn’t wearing glasses at all. And the most important aspect, the prescription, is spot-on. I can wear these glasses all day if needed without eyestrain or headache. I know where I’ll be getting my glasses from now on!

You do need to do your homework before ordering. The best thing you can do beforehand is to go visit physical stores and try on their frames to see what feels and looks good on you. Write down the brand names and all the little letters and numbers engraved into the temple arms of the frames you like. Then, go to your favourite search engine and input that information until you find the specs of each set of frames: lens width, lens height, bridge, temple arm length, and frame width. The more info you can track down, the better chance you stand of finding just what you want, particularly when it comes to lens size information. On Zenni, look for frames that have lens shapes and frame size specs similar to the frames you liked in person. They don’t have to be an exact match, but you want them to be as close as you can get, within about five to ten millimeters if possible.

In addition to your prescription, you’ll also need to know your pupillary distance (PD), something optometrists often don’t write on your prescription. This is the distance between your eyes, and it’s VERY important you have this measurement correct (I don’t recommend trying to measure it yourself). Luckily, you can walk into just about any place that sells glasses and have them determine your PD. Zenni also provides helpful data on how to read the measurements you’re given for every section of the ordering process, so even though you may be confused to start, everything is explained and made easy. Trust me, doing the little bit of legwork is totally worth saving a few hundred dollars on your glasses!

Zenni also makes sure to verify the information in your order before making the glasses. If you make a mistake or buy an add-on you don’t really know that you need for your prescription, they’ll contact you to explain why you don’t need the extra purchase and refund any extra money you were charged. When you place your order, Zenni tells you that you will receive a receipt by e-mail; mine didn’t come until my glasses were shipped about two weeks later, so don’t worry if you don’t get your receipt e-mail right after ordering. But make sure to check your spam filters regularly–Zenni sends their glasses with Delivery Confirmation, which means you get a tracking code in that e-mail! Speaking of shipping, Zenni’s service is much faster than in previous years. I remember hearing that all their glasses used to come from Asia and could sometimes take months to arrive and be processed through (and occasionally rejected by) customs. Now, orders for US customers are coming from California, which is good news to anyone in the country who prefers to have their glasses in days rather than weeks. Glasses ordered in other countries still come from Asia, I believe.

Do I seem happy with my glasses? Because I totally am. And now, my glasses and I are going to play Oblivion on the PC while still being able to see the DVR’d episode of The Venture Bros. playing on the TV four feet away. Long live Zenni Optical!

Some were expecting me to write a nice long rant about Jeph Jacques’s* recent blog post on the “State of the Webcomics Union”, part of which read:

The idea of critical analysis of webcomics has largely died out. Sure, people still blog about webcomics and “review” them and stuff, but it’s become a tiny, tiny niche sector. I think this is mainly because there’s not a whole lot of point to reviewing something anybody can go look at for free and make up their own mind about! Is this a good thing? I have no idea.

*The creator of the terrific webcomic Questionable Content, reviewed by yers truly here.

I’m not going to write a nice long rant on this rather controversial view because, well, just look at that statement. I shouldn’t have to point out the irony of someone saying that talking about the world of webcomics is becoming obsolete in a heavily-read blog post that is talking about the world of webcomics. Also, even though the majority of my current articles aren’t about webcomics, most of the traffic I get here on Spwug comes from people who are looking for more information about them. So, you know. Suck on that for a bit. You can split hairs about what you think was actually being said on ye olde LiveJournal, but I’m here to write about something more positive this week.

Instead of complaining about geek divisions, I’m here to talk about geek love, and how it penetrates (huh huh, I said “penetrates”) webcomics, even through other genres of nerdism.

Tonight, I watched the supremeariffic (it’s a word now) parody movie The Gamers: Dorkness Rising. As anyone who’s seen it knows, it relies heavily on making funny commentary about dice gamers. But it went beyond that, oh, yes. Within the first few minutes, the character Nodwick was introduced–a henchman NPC (not to be confused with Dungeons & Dragons’ hireling NPC’s), whose primary role is to lug the adventuring party’s crap and do all the little odd jobs the player characters just don’t want to do–like guarding treasure–as it would distract them from seducing tavern wenches and priestesses.

Hey, wait, this Nodwick guy sounds familiar…and I don’t just mean in the context of Dungeons & Dragons parody. Why is that….Oh, I know! The webcomic Nodwick, which is itself a nod to tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons. A gaming movie nod to a webcomic that’s a gaming nodwick?

META BLACK HOLE. MY GOD, IT’S FULL OF SCARS.

For much of the movie, the gamemaster wears a shirt featuring switchblade-toting rabbit Bun-bun, from the webcomic Sluggy Freelance. While not a gaming parody webcomic (Sluggy pokes fun at pretty much everything), it wasn’t any less “nifty” a nod, as the Sluggites would say. It gives me a fuzzy tingle to think of the movie crew, largely geeks in real life as well, leaving the dice and the set to go home and possibly read webcomics.

Maybe we don’t have hundreds of thousands of webcomic-reviewing blogs right now, like we do for celebrity scandals and politics (both MASSIVELY more well-known topics than online comics; let’s be honest here). But it’s not like discussion of the digital-comic world is going away, despite what Jacques wrote. If anything, the discussions are growing in number, as webcomics themselves become less limited to the dark corners of the Internet and start penetrating (heeeeee) the general online realm, and the world outside our computers as well. More people read webcomics; thus, more people discuss webcomics. (How many movies would have featured webcomics fifteen years ago, hmmm?) You no longer have to perform arcane rituals in order to find a webcomic review, and these reviews are no longer limited to randomly-updating personal blogs. Now, you can talk about your favourite online comics at convention panels, while hanging out with friends, or even with total strangers who recognize your Bun-bun shirt on the street. Online, you can find reviews of webcomics on almost any site that appeals to the general nerd, in the comments as well as the posts. Opinions are EV’-RY-WHERE! To say that expressing opinions about one single topic is dying out is not that much less absurd than saying that expressing opinions in general is dying out. You know what they say about opinions and arseholes, after all….

And this was mine. Opinion, I mean. You don’t get to see the other thing.

Well. I guess I did rant a little after all. Therapeutic! I’ll see ya all next time, yo.

Some time ago, I read an article in an entertainment magazine that described how babies are the death knell of American sitcoms. According to this piece, babies change the score of a television series, just as babies change the score of…well, everything…in real life. If a young’un is present in the show from the first episode, that’s fine (remember how popular Full House was, for some unexplainable reason?) In that instance, there’s nothing majorly new for the viewers to have to grow accustomed to later. But add a little bundle of joy six seasons in, and watch the ratings fall like Fat Bastard on a free buffet. Fans who’ve spent years watching a show for the antics of a funny young couple are put off and ditch the series when the wacky fictitious antics of a child-free life are replaced with jokes about 2 AM feedings and not being able to find a babysitter for Friday night.

Most webcomics are a lot more like sitcoms than many of us would care to admit. They’re often bite-sized chunks of problems that can be resolved in a very short span of time: five weekdays is the common golden rule, a carryover from the heyday of newspaper funnies. Things rarely change dramatically, if they ever change at all–at the end of the day, everything is back to normal. And the jokes are usually recycled and aimed at the largest, and often dumbest, demographic. (Yeah, I confess I’m not a fan of most sitcoms that don’t bear the BBC’s logo. And when I did watch a lot of American network sitcoms, back before I had satellite or cable, I do remember that I usually dropped a show shortly after a new kidlet came along.)

Luckily, one way that some webcomics break away from their talkie-picture relatives is in the area of babies. Instead of making the webcomic less funny, I’m actually finding myself laughing more at what family expansion is bringing to the table in a couple of my favourite online strips.

Take Something Positive, for one. The characters in this comic are known for their burning cynicism and sarcastic, profanity-laden, and often entirely inappropriate humour. These are characters who will make coat-hanger abortion jokes to expectant mothers–the very first strip, for example (although the guy, Davan, would probably say there was no joking involved):

In other words, the cast of Something Positive make all the blunt-but-funny commentary that most of us wish we could get away with in public. When two of the cast, Aubrey and Jason, announced they were adopting a baby, I had a moment of glee. These two weren’t going to be the boring parents that every sitcom couple becomes, oh no! They were going to raise their kid with all the cutting-edge sarcasm, street smarts, quick wit, and pure “cool” that the rest of us can only envy. Aubrey and Jason were going to be the Queen and King of Freakin’ Awesome MomandDadland.

And, don’tchya know, I was right. (Linked instead of posted here due to some possible naughtiness in this particular strip.) I think that’s the first time the addition of a baby to a story has made me laugh aloud!

In another brilliant strip, Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic (warning! Lots of funny naughty bits and funny fantasy violence in this series!), babies aren’t on the way just yet in the current storyline….But considering a royal wedding has just taken place between a newly-crowned orc-human prince and his three(!) orcish brides, the pitter-patter of little green war-waging feet may not be far behind. When you’re part of a species that prides itself on its Chaotic Evil alignment and have recently acquired an army of servants, the whole pesky “raising kids thing” is done a little bit differently, and, with any luck, by someone else:

Yes, I can safely say that, for once, I’m actually looking forward to the addition of children to some of my favourite comics! Take note, sitcom writers. That’s how you handle family expansion correctly: you make it funny without changing the style of humour, and you don’t let it interrupt the pre-established flow of the story that’s existed long before rugrats came into play.

I’ll take my pay for saving countless sitcoms in cash, please.

…congratulations to Richard and Katy, the supreme rulers of the Spwugniverse!!!!!

They are the essence of everything that is Spwug.  Without either of them, this site wouldn’t be here to bring you a daily dose of all things geek.

It was an honor and a privilege to witness the joining of these two forces of good.  They are my friends.  They are my family.  I am proud to be the head writer of something they envisioned, and I am proud to be a part of their lives.

My best wishes to both of you, Pocky Rich and Katy.  Here’s to bigger and greater things.  With your powers combined, anything is possible.

Time again for a bit of the ol’ ultra-review! This time, we’re tackling The Meek, by the very friendly Der-shing Helmer. This beautifully-stylized story sporadically updates once or twice a week (I generally check Sundays and Thursdays). A relatively new webcomic, The Meek is only fifty-odd pages into things. So now’s the time to jump in!

Little note: the artist has been sharing data about the comic which reveals more backstory than you can currently find in the published pages. I’ll mainly just be going into what’s revealed so far in the comic itself and on its website, but I’ll give a link to more information at the end for those wanting further backstory or possible spoilers.

Now, let’s meet our current lovely cast and learn a little bit about their various stories….

Angora – One of the three main characters and the first introduced, Angora’s a bit of a wild child, spending most of the first chapter antagonizing people and running around naked to humourous effect (you’ll see a lot more of her wobbly jailbait jubblies than you may care to!) She was raised by mysterious guardians deep in a tropical forest, hidden away from human civilization, and really isn’t sure yet what to make of society outside her home. Also, her “grandfather” is a giant amphibian. Uh…you’ll see. By the way, if you thought “Angora” was an unusual name, here’s some interesting trivia: the artist once put up some design sketches from the very early stages of the comic’s planning, in which Angora was originally a catgirl.

While not a feline anymore, she’s still got a unique talent. If you’ve spent more than five minutes looking at webcomics, you’d likely shrug off her green hair as normal for a comic character…until you get a few little flashbacks of Angora’s life that take place shortly before the beginning of the comic, revealing a much more normal hair colour.

We-e-ell, it’s not exactly the hair that’s green….It’s plant life growing in her hair which turns it that colour. If that’s not cool enough, she can make plants grow around her as well. Hopefully we’ll see soon how this came to be, but it’s already proved a very useful talent to have for self-defense.

Luca deSadar – The second major character, Luca is probably better known to the public as Emperor deSadar. Since he’s only just appeared in the second chapter, not much is known, except that he’s short, grumpy, has oddly twisted and blackened fingers, is missing teeth, has a fake leg, doesn’t think much of female ambassadors, and totally doesn’t need any help getting by from his taller wife. Nope. None at all.

Pinter deJersi – Serving as Angora’s unwilling sidekick and travel guide, this guy really wishes he’d just been left alone in his little tent in the forest. The son of a brilliant cartographer and a mapmaker himself, Pinter’s technically working out of his location in the woods…if by “working,” you mean “drinking and smoking himself into oblivion.” Which I do.

Phe deSadar – Luca’s wife. She’s a steel-willed lady, which definitely seems to come in handy for dealing with her stubborn husband. Presumably, she’s skilled in, as the Internet kiddies would say, “topping him.”

The final main character has yet to be introduced, but according to the website’s cast page, she’s on a mission to kill her ex-boyfriend. When the three main characters’ plot threads finally intertwine, it’s looking to make a VERY interesting story. As to the story so far, it begins with Angora on her quest. Said quest is largely undefined as yet, but as you can guess, things are not all happy back in Angora’s hidden jungle home.

Angora’s “grandfather” Mocheril, who’s looking a little worse for wear, needs her help. For reasons that I hope extend beyond “we wouldn’t have a plot if he just TOLD her flat-out where to go and what to do,” he gives her this cryptic set of clues:

I’m not really a fan of the whole “solve the riddle to advance the story” theme, since it’s usually done just to stretch out the plot. I mean, if the fate of the world rests upon someone being in a specific place or doing a specific thing, I’m not saying, “Seek out the eternal sleepers of stone in their dying-light home.” (I totally made that up just now. What a prophet I am!) I’m going to say, “Hey, Josh, I’m gonna need you to leave off those TPS reports and get your ass to that cemetery with all the creepy statues on the west side of town. It’s kinda urgent if you don’t want us all to die. Oh, and I’m gonna need you to come in on Sunday and fix my computer too–you know, when you’re done saving humanity and all. No, you won’t get overtime pay; you know it’s not in our budget right now.”

Still, the tale has been an engaging ride so far, vague instructions notwithstanding. I’m hoping to find out that there’s good reason for Mocheril’s use of riddles even though he needs Angora to act quickly and stay out of danger. Maybe he’s one of those “blind seers” we see so much of in fantasy comics, making the required cryptic prophecy and has no clue what he was saying himself at the time. Time will (or won’t) tell, but I’ll be enjoying the story the whole way. And, given the fact that there are at least two other main plot threads in addition to Angora’s that’ve barely even been touched yet….We can expect a cubic crapton (to use the technical term) of story development, more questions raised, and, eventually, questions answered. If the story is half as good as the art, it’s a comic that’ll encourage discussion long after its end.

Speaking of the art, I get fizzy shiny happy feelings just from looking at The Meek’s pages. Like any good artist, Helmer has a style that you can recognize anywhere. The colours are brilliant, the bold lines make it clear what you’re looking at, and the cartoony style works perfectly for the almost slapstick-style comedy and exaggerated expressions the characters pull. If the comic had been drawn in a more realism-based style, Angora’s nudity would’ve seemed much more disturbing, especially given her young age. But cartoon jubblies? Well, that’s just funny! It takes the comic out of “rated R for naughty bits” and into classic Looney Tunes territory. (And since Mocheril’s directions weren’t specific, Angora probably will wish she’d taken that left turn at Albuquerque.)

I’ll wrap this up by saying The Meek is very new, but it’s already on my list of favourite webcomics. And we all know that what reviewers say on the Internet is gospel truth, yeah? So when I say, “you’ll love this webcomic,” you know you can’t go wrong by reading it. Right?

….Leave me to my delusions of grandeur, and I’ll see you next time, guys! Until then, go here for more information on the people and story of The Meek.

When I’m on the phone with family, my housemate is usually a few feet away, blowing zombies to pieces in Call of Duty 5 or racking up headshots in Battlefield 1943. A common phone conversation goes like this:

THEM: I hear a lot of noise over there. Is he playing games again?
ME: Yep, he’s playing online with some friends.
THEM: Everyone’s staying home to play?
ME: Yeah, no one wanted to waste time and gas driving over to someone’s house, and then we’d still have to drive back home later ’cause we all have work tomorrow.
THEM: So do you guys ever actually hang out anymore, or do you just all stay home and play video games without ever seeing each other?

Gamers are reclusive, shunning the light, not to mention all other people. Surviving on chips in order to gain one more level before work, one more rare drop item, as their chair strains under the player’s ever-increasing bulk. It’s a common myth about gamers, and one that’s probably had most of us rolling our eyes at some point (and had the guilty gamers struggling to get their respective behinds unstuck from their chairs). Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to raise a counterpoint. Not with the fact that you can actually socialize with friends while gaming, via headsets like you’re talking on the phone. No, this is about a much more physical type of gaming interaction.

The Sunday LAN Party. It’s become a sort of tradition amongst my group, only failing to take place when most of us are out of town or have to work. We pick a house, and everyone lugs over their computers and consoles, their handhelds, their huge flatscreen monitors, movies, drinks, and a whole lot of potluckin’-good food. People take turns playing games, since it almost never happens that everyone owns the game currently being played on the local network. While a group game is in session, anyone not playing eats, chats with whoever’s nearby, watches movies, plays cards, or mucks about on a Nintendo DS or a PSP. Even the people who are engrossed in multiplayer gaming are talking with one another–that is, when they’re not yelling instructions like, “ZOMBIE BEHIND YOU!” or “Crap! I need a revive!”

In other words, it’s a real party, full of real party activities (some of which are fueled by real alcohol), and real party people (who may or may not be raisin’ their hands in the air like they just don’t care). It just has the word “LAN” in front of it.

And that bit about us gamers shunning the light? I took this photo at the last LAN party (only had my cell phone camera, sadly). Check out the full-size version, and….Why, just LOOK at all that sunlight coming in through the patio door! Okay, so that part’s a bit tongue-in-cheek….Still, though. It’s natural light. I think it counts.

The boys were gracious enough to reveal part of their screens for this photo, to showcase the variety of gaming we get up to at these things (albeit they’re all on PS3s at the moment. Some Nintendo and PC gaming was going on outside of camera range.) Can YOU identify all the games being represented here?

That’s all for this installment. Tune in next time for…I don’t even know what, but it’ll be here!

Welcome back! Are you ready for your weekly punishment? I’ve got so many wonderful things lined up! Like a punch in the face. A kick in the teeth. The ear-biting-off to end all ear-biting-off-ings. Later, I’ll glare at a puppy. The inHUMANITY.

Actually, none of that’s true. (This week.) But if you thought I was being a bit hostile,** then you’ve just seen me pull the lamest segue ever, once I jump into the tribute review for the recently-ended webcomic Friendly Hostility.

**You really just thought, “Wow, that’s unnecessarily mean,” didn’t you?

Formerly a thrice-weekly strip, Friendly Hostility began on January 8, 2004 and ended on July 25, 2009. It was the brainchild of the wonderfully demented and prolific K. Sandra Fuhr (whose new webcomic gets a mini-writeup at the end of this tribute). Fuhr’s blurb on the front page of the website relates a good sum-up of the overarching plot: “Friendly Hostility is the story of two best friends who happen to be dating each other: Fox, a reporter, and Collin, a megalomaniacal would-be dictator and former kid’s show host.” Oh, but of course there’s so much more than that….

A veritable melting pot of cultures (and species), the cast of Friendly Hostility is almost as varied as the types of plots that came into play during the comic’s five and a half years of service. Just to give you a taste of what could be expected in any given installment, let’s blab a bit on some of the characters, which conveniently doubles as summaries for numerous plots:

Collin Sri’vastra (smirking at right in the above picture) – Intense, mostly-serious, rather antisocial, and a self-professed asexual (in one storyline, though, he has to face up to actually admitting he’s gay to his family, due to the whole, you know, “relationship with Fox” thing). He looks like “such a nice young man,” as the old lady next door would say, but if you drive-by tap his car’s bumper in the parking lot, you’re likely to find the charred remains of your vehicle smoldering on your doorstep the next morning. Incongruously, Collin works for much of the strip as Safari Sam, a children’s show host. Collin’s not-so-secret ambition in life is to overthrow a South American country, preferably Venezuela, and become dictator by age 30. At one point, he decides it’s time to act out his dream and travels to Venezuela, with rather less-than-successful results.

Kailen “Fox” Maharassa – Don’t let that serious expression trick you. Fox is a happy dork who’s mostly content to let life drift by, work the odd reporting gig, and support his boyfriend’s Venezuelan domination schemes (he affectionately calls Collin “Boss”), although he steps up if a big problem needs solving. Near the end of the comic, he convinces Collin to accept that their relationship has gotten a bit rocky, in order to enroll the pair in counseling. Fox doesn’t care if you’re straight, gay, a demon, Nyarlathotep the Crawling Chaos, or a weekend Satanist–as long as you’re a mostly-good person, you’re more than welcome to hang out and drink with him. Just don’t call him Kailen.

The Demon – The 2,783rd child of Lilith, the Demon’s real name can’t be addressed here, as it causes dripping nosebleeds to any mortal who encounters it. Sorry! Despite his demonic background, he’s actually a decent sort of guy. He drinks with Fox and Collin, tries to meet women, and even takes a job as a nurse. He’s more of a moral voice for the comic than most of the non-demonic characters. Even when he recommends interior decorating with dead babies. (I would argue, “ESPECIALLY when he recommends interior decorating with dead babies,” but my lawyers tell me I shouldn’t reveal incriminating evidence about my hobbies.)

Anne “Bootsie” Khoeler – Collin’s “slave,” won in a poker game against her brother (the prize was actually the guy’s kidney, but he didn’t wanna pay up). Renamed “Bootsie” after a cat of Collin’s, Anne is more of a little sister/housekeeper to Fox and Collin. When her “slaving” contract expires, she wants to stick around to take care of the pair, on the condition that Collin gives her a village in the South American country he finally conquers. She grows up from nervous little girl to a bold young woman over the course of Friendly Hostility, tries unsuccessfully to date the Demon, and eventually moves away to college.

Fatima “The Evil Ice Princess from Hell” Maharassa (addressing the “fine art” of stalking above) – Fox’s older sister. It’s not so much that Fatima’s evil. It’s just that she does things her way, only her way, and she has her own unique moral code, which she rigidly adheres to. She sees The World According to Fatima, and scoffs at anyone else’s ideas that things could be done differently. She rejects notions of femininity and beauty, can and likely will kill you with her bare hands, and is easily mistaken for a long-haired, hairy-pitted man (in stark contrast to the soft and cute baby she was at the beginning of the comic). Fatima resents her mother’s embracing of feminine beauty and life as a housewife, and their relationship is strained at best, even after Fatima leaves her family by moving to Alaska. She was also briefly stalked by a woman named Amanda, who eventually ended up launching (unintentionally) into outer space as a result of being impregnated with Fatima’s “volatile Maharassa DNA.” (Did I mention Fatima’s and Fox’s dad is a mad scientist? No? Well.) In one of the more surprising plot developments, Fatima marries a man who saved her from freezing after she lost a fight with an avalanche (while trying to pick a fight with a bear) in Alaska. This becomes a little less surprising when she states she did so because she wants the man’s beautiful house and cat. Fatima’s relationship with her family is accurately summed up and depicted in this strip–they love her, but they also know that she won’t hesitate to sell them all out if it furthers her goals.

….And that’s just for starters. The cast gets even crazier, with characters like Padma and Nefertari “Bunny” Maharassa, the parents of Fox and Fatima. Bunny is a dancer-turned-homemaker, while Padma is the afore-mentioned mad scientist who has NASA on speed-dial. There’s “Uncle Rafi” Ibrafim (also seen in the above linked comic), a family friend who works as a Satanic priest on weekends, where they host a heckuva bake sale. And there’s Kitty, who begins as a fake girlfriend for another character, then becomes a real girlfriend of sorts, then has to share her fake-real boyfriend with another man (makes perfect sense, right?) And it just gets wilder from there.

The art is in a style that’s uniquely Fuhr’s. She’s not afraid to draw characters with realistic body types, which gives them personality, as well as balance to the amusingly unrealistic situations they often end up in. Friendly Hostility actually begins as a side story that takes place years earlier, when Fatima is still a baby. This means that the characters have to age over the course of the comic, and they do so believably–for example, look at this strip, featuring Padma, Bunny, Rafi, and baby Fatima. Compare it to this one, featuring the same characters a few decades later.

The storylines are sometimes just for laughs, but more often show how the various character relationships develop, fall apart, reconcile, and evolve. Also, sometimes ducks explode. It’s not a comic where you can just jump in at the beginning of any given storyline and instantly know what’s going on. That’s the closest thing to a warning I’ve really got here (and it’s stated to tickle your fancy rather than to tell you “watch out so this doesn’t trip you up”). Years of development have gone into the interactions amongst much of the cast. Fuhr includes more than enough variety in this comic that it never gets old or trite. Even the punchlines that have been done many times before in the world of humour manage to fit in here.

Friendly Hostility is actually connected to numerous earlier webcomic works by Fuhr, with characters from this comic appearing in earlier webcomics. Moreover, characters from Friendly Hostility will be appearing in Fuhr’s newest comic, Other People’s Business. But as Friendly Hostility is the first comic of Fuhr’s I read, this is where I’m placing your jumping-off point.

Now for a little blurb about Fuhr’s newest project, Other People’s Business. It only started up once Friendly Hostility was ending its run, so there’s not a lot to tell–perfect for a follow-up recommendation to a big webcomic review, eh?

Other People’s Business is the story of Daniela “Danny” Alvarez, a girl who’s pretty much given up on getting anywhere in life and prefers to drink herself into oblivion. This lofty goal gets shattered when a thief named Hilary literally comes crashing into her life (via the window), and the two end up on the run from a “fake cop,” who appears to have, at the very least, a secret mechanical arm (okay, so it’s tattoos…for now). And that’s about all I can tell you! At only seventeen pages in, catching up on this comic’s archives shouldn’t take you more than a few minutes. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more about this strip here later….

But for now, you won’t be seeing anything else, because I am outski!

Being a gamer, it naturally follows that I’d love remixed video game music. The talented folks over at OverClocked ReMix and VGMix have seen my patronage for the better part of the past decade.

Years ago, I downloaded pretty much the entire stock of both sites (before VGMix went down for several years), but Life conspired to Get In The Way, and I didn’t listen to much of my stash until recent months. Somehow, I managed to whittle down over 5 gigabytes of music and add the winners to my collection. I just completed the final weeding right before writing this, in fact. Of course, playing so many songs in rapid succession means you pick up on running themes in the composition of the tracks. And then you realize that some of those themes are more like annoying clichés, having been used and reused and done to death, then done even more until the resulting track rises up again as a shambling musical zombie, and you’re forced to grab a shotgun and put a hole in its head to end its eternal misery.

Metaphorically speaking, of course. In actuality, the head-shooting is achieved merely by hitting the delete button on your keyboard. I guess I’m just boring that way. Also, I don’t own a shotgun. I know whose house gets swarmed first by the upcoming zombie apocalypse hordes~!

So! In celebration of increasing my music collection while decreasing the strain on my hard drive, I decided to make up this list for your reading pleasure. If you’re an aspiring remixer or a current composer, here’s the clichés of video-game remixing that you might wanna avoid:

1. Putting a generic drum and bass beat in the background and doubling the tempo doesn’t make it a rave mix.

2. If you’re doing a Zelda remix of “Epona’s Theme” you really do not need to have repeated sound effects of horses neighing. They just clash with your music.

3. If you’re doing a Mario remix, you don’t need to have sound clips of Mario shouting “Here we go!” and “Wheeeeee!”

4. Likewise, if you’re doing a Castlevania remix, you don’t need to have whip-cracking sound effects. I’m serious. No, really, you don’t need them. Especially not in what seems like every single remix.

5. You don’t need sound bites from media that have nothing to do with your remix. This includes tacking clips from Fight Club, Kill Bill, or The Breakfast Club at the beginning/middle/end of your Final Fantasy track. It also includes random whispering and fuzzy conversations.

6. If your song involves rain (example: remixing Zelda’s “Song of Storms”), having gentle rainfall in the background is nice. Not so nice are loud lightning cracks and thunderclaps overpowering the music all throughout the track.

7. Never ever make a country music remix of your favourite video game theme. I’m begging you.

8. There’s no law that says all Castlevania remixes have to be heavy metal. (Although some of the awesome ones I’ve heard sometimes make me think there should be such an edict.)

9. If you don’t have a professional-quality microphone, don’t put your voice in the track.

10. Related to #9: the chances of you being a bad singer/rapper are much higher than the chances of you being the next MC Frontalot. Please take this into consideration before you fire up that mic!

Welp, that about wraps it up for this jaded old gamer. Come back next time! But for now, get off my lawn, you darn kids.

Sometimes you’ve just gotta tackle the deepest questions of the Universe.

This isn’t one of those times.

So, now that you’re surely caught up on the archives of the previous two webcomics reviewed here, it’s time to bustle along. My bustle, please! (NOTE: No one actually wants to see me wearing a bustle.)

This time, we have Questionable Content, a Monday-through-Friday comic by Jeph Jacques (rhymes with “Dax”…you know, as in Jadzia? We’re all geeks here, right?) The title alone should give you some hints that the subject of this week’s review is probably not something you want to bring up to your boss, your kids, or your place of worship. Unless all of the preceding are really freakin’ cool.

This hilarious little ditty is a slice-of-life webcomic that details the normal day-to-day goings-on of its cast. Amongst its characters are the son of a famous dominatrix, an obsessive-compulsive object-counter who makes the title character of USA’s Monk look like a well-adjusted individual, and a sentient computer whose favourite hobby is downloading, well, “questionable content” onto his hard drive. The comic also features such perfectly normal events as random bouts of formal dress and introduces many of us to the should-be-an-Olympic sport of Speed Beer. (I don’t drink it, but I’d watch it!)

Yep. Totally normal day-to-day goings-on.

The art’s instantly recognizable; once you’re familiar with Jacques’s style, you’ll recognize it wherever you see it. I love how Jacques isn’t afraid to draw characters with more normal body types as well, rather than the idealized impossible bodies and faces we see far too much of in popular media. If a character has a physical flaw in Questionable Content, you’ll usually see it. And this comic is the perfect example of one of my favourite things about many independent artists–watching how their work evolves over time, rather than being a refined product from the start that never changes. Look at how Questionable Content’s style has changed since the comic’s launch in 2003:

First strip!
Strip #200!
Strip #300!
Strip #450!
Strip #800!
How the strip looks today! (Okay, so that’s just another link to the main page. Still.)

And if any panel in any strip has ever completely cracked you up, there’s a good chance that Jacques has made a T-shirt out of it for you to buy at the comic’s store. Questionable Content is one of those ideal rarities in the webcomicking world; Jacques actually makes his living from the comic and the merchandise produced from it. Of course, this just encourages him to keep improving and keep making the comic better and better so we’ll always come back to read again. You don’t hear me complainin’!

One of the possible side effects of making a living off your art is that you may develop a nasty little thing called a “work ethic.” In this comic, you won’t find long hiatuses, frequent “oops, forgot to do an update” messages, or long delays when it was promised the next strip would go up a week ago. If Jacques can’t make a regular update for some reason, you’re treated to funny filler in the form of Yelling Bird. Who, as you might imagine, is a clip-art bird. Who yells. Generally obscenities about how much Jacques sucks, but no topic is sacred, and all topics have me laughing out loud.

Now, it’s traditional for a webcomic to have a gimmick. Most artists opt for either cute talking animals or cute talking machines that are beyond the bounds of current real-world technology. Jacques pounced on the latter, which gives us the AnthroPC’s–sentient, talking, walking computers. These guys’re a constant source of comic relief, as well as a jab at the stereotyped personalities of people who have excessive loyalty to a specific operating system. (The jab at Linux loyalists, as presented by the paranoid, bad-tempered, high-horsed Linux AnthroPC, gives you an idea why I no longer allow Linux distros in my home computers.) There was also a “pet” Roomba at one point that mostly existed in the background and didn’t speak, but it hasn’t put in an appearance for a while.

Of course, I’ve gotta give the human characters their due as well, seein’ as they’re the main driving force of the comic. This is where the story isn’t all fun and games. Or rather, it’s always fun to read, but occasionally serious storylines come up, at which point “games” isn’t exactly the word I’d use to describe things. Time passes in the comic, the human characters mature, fall in love, fall out of love, change jobs, lose jobs, worry about where their lives are going, get amusingly tipsy at the local bar, share dark secrets from the past, start bands, get confronted by wandering bears in the middle of town, become secret James Bond-like super-agents, and congregate in a coffee shop where many of the characters work and abuse the customers (make sure you always read the “Today’s Specials” on the chalkboard in the background). The ongoing story is really far much more in-depth than I give credit for here, but telling you the details would be giving away spoilers that would be much more fun for you to read for yourself. Suffice it to say that Jacques’s writing is extremely tight, and most serious information is also important to the ongoing slice-of-life plot.

Any downsides? I honestly can’t complain much. Jacques really knows what he’s doing. In the beginning era, he made a lot of indie-rock references and jokes that appealed to a niche audience, but has since moved on to much broader humour. The only thing in the comic I don’t care for is the character Faye Whitaker, and I freely admit that I seem to be in the minority there, to read the “Your favourite character” threads in the Questionable Content forums.

See, Faye’s tragic secret past is one of the main points of the ongoing story, but the character herself just kinda makes me want to throw half-frozen water balloons at her. She starts out angsty and angry, moves on to wishy-washy and angry, and now she’s confused, mopey, and angry (there is a good reason for part of this, but it would be a spoiler to tell you!) In the early days of the comic, Faye also had the annoying tendency to punch people who’d already proved they were just trying to help her, such as Marten Reed, who was pretty darn self-sacrificing in order to accommodate Faye’s numerous “issues.” Another irking character quirk was her speech pattern near the beginning. She’s originally from Georgia and decided to mask her Southern accent upon moving north to the comic’s location. To hide her accent? She wouldn’t use contractions. I honestly don’t get how that makes any sense. (I spent twenty-five years in the Deep South. My ears tell me it takes a lot more than axing apostrophes to remove an accent, any accent.) Faye’s speech was jarring and distracting during this phase; it read like a robot along the lines of Lieutenant Commander Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Luckily, Faye’s loosened up and welcomed apostrophes back into her life as the comic moves on; now she just needs to “get over herself” and stop acting like an emo teen.

If that piddling little bit is my entire complaint section, I’d say we’re doing really well here! Questionable Content is such a versatile comic, it’ll probably amuse you unless your tastes are really extreme or absurd. And even then…let’s just say that Jacques doesn’t hold back when he wants to make a joke, no matter how out there it is. (Oh, dear lord, why did I have to link THAT ONE.)

Time to go upstairs for my nightly brain-scrubbing, so I’ll see you all next time!