New Game Stuff (2/21/2014)

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Feb 212014
 

Topps and Steve Jackson have combined forces to ward off the alien invaders of Mars Attacks!

This fifteen card booster pack combines with Munchkin Apocalypse, specifically, pitting brave survivors against Monster Bugs and Heat Ray Saucers!  But don’t worry, you’ll have Martian Ray Guns and Giant Spiky Feet to ward them off with.

Control how the world’s inhabitants evolve in Origin, from Matagot Games.

Expanding outward from Africa, players strategically lay tiles representing various technologies and resources across the globe.  Dependent on size, thickness, and color, these tiles will contribute different effects to the game and each player.  Set collection and area management combine within the rise of the human species!

Four new lieutenant miniature packs for the Descent board game arrive this weekend, including:

-Raythen

-Serena

-Ariad

-Queen Ariad

A diplomacy game revolving around five different aspects, Moral Conflict 1939 pits nations, i.e. players, against each other in a battle on various fronts.  Players have to balance their control in the theaters of war, economics, diplomacy, technology, and internal balancing or morally honest and corrupt acts.

Fear and loathing in Netrunner Vegas is not the official name of the most recent Data Pack release, but it totally should have been.  Regardless of the lack of Johnny Depp as Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing does include sixty new cards to add to the base game and expand the ever-present hacker battle.

We’re taking the hobbits to Isengard, to Isengard, to Isengard!

The Lord of the Rings:  The Voice of Isengard is the third deluxe expansion for the Fantasy Flight LCG series!  It’s time to shift over to the dark side in this expansion, as players join with Saruman the White in three entirely new scenarios relying on two new hero cards.

The zombie pandemic spreads even further with Last Night on Earth:  Blood in the Forest!

This expansion can be added to the original base game or Timber Peak, continuing to explore Experience system as well as expanding the forest itself with new board pieces and zombie types.

Straight from the Land of Ooo into your own home, comes the original Adventure Time card game, Card Wars!

Coming out this week are two beginner deck sets, including Finn vs. Jake and BMO vs. Lady Rainicorn!  Each of these feature two forty card decks that can be combined or played as is!

Comic List Highlights (5/11/2013)

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May 112013
 

Shmowzow!  Is that a completely original Adventure Time graphic novel formatted like the mathematically popular Scott Pilgrim series?

Uh, duh.

Adventure Time:  Playing with Fire is a complete story in a manga-esque digest volume from Boom! Studios, relating a special adventure between Jake, Finn, and Flame Princess.  For the first time ever, Flame Princess has decided to leave the Fire Kingdom, venturing beyond its boundaries in order to find some new thrills.  Spinning out of the highly successful ongoing Adventure Time series, Playing with Fire is drawn by series regular Zack Sterling who’s perfect at aping the look of the television show.  So stop being a lumpy lump butt and pick up a copy.

Following in the footsteps and paw prints of Finn and Jake, Mordecai and Rigby are parking their golf cart in the vicinity of Pulp Fiction.  After Boom! received such a wild reaction to their ongoing and miniseries for Adventure Time (something in the range of Whooooooooooooooooaaaaahh!) they decided to mine Cartoon Network for some other material and came up with Regular Show.  Don’t be a hambone and miss out on the first issue as I’m sure Fist Pump is going to make an appearance.

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHH!

If you haven’t heard, it’s the fiftieth anniversary of Doctor Who.  And as the longest running sci-fi show on television turns fifty years old IDW has been turning out some impressive comic adventures for The Doctor.  Namely, Prisoners of Time, which is a twelve issue miniseries starring every incarnation of The Doctor in their own solo adventure.  Now that Doctors one through four have had their issues released, IDW has turned out the volume one trade paperback, collecting the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Doctors’ adventures.  Though each issue is standalone, a dark force is plotting against the Doctor, stealing his companions throughout time, taunting the Doctor to follow him.  Now, though this hasn’t been confirmed, the assumption is that issue twelve of the series will feature all eleven Doctors together, fighting to reclaim their companions.  So, hop onto the TARDIS while you can with Prisoners of Time v.1, because you never know when the next regeneration is coming.

When The Hulk isn’t offering sound psychiatric help (hope you stuck around after the credits), he’s punching a time card for S.H.I.E.L.D.  The Indestructible Hulk v.1 HC smashes into the store this Wednesday, and you’d better take a look at it if you don’t want to make Banner angry.  Written by comic legend Mark Waid (who’s been murdering the hell out of the Daredevil comic for the last two years), Indestructible Hulk revolves around a simple principle:  Bruce Banner doesn’t want to be remembered as a monster anymore, so he’s agreed to work for S.H.I.E.L.D. in return for the opportunity to invent world-changing thingies.  And what happens when he Hulks out?  They point him in the right direction.  High stress environment + scientist who explodes when angered = entertainment.

Comic List Highlights (5/8/2013)

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May 042013
 

There’s been whining about Avengers Arena out there, about how it’s just Hunger Games or Battle Royale, about how it’s all just a gimmick to kill characters, waah, waah, waah!  We’ll we’re here to tell those people to shut up.  Avengers Arena is easily one of the best books to come out of the Marvel NOW line of relaunch comics.  And that is for the same reason that all the above complaints mean nothing:  characters.  Dennis Hopeless excels at many aspects of the narrative process, but primary among them is his ability to write layered, rounded, fascinating characters.  With characters you care about it doesn’t matter what plot structure you apply (because let’s be honest, they’re all just repeats of Shakespeare), the story is always compelling.  So, place your bets, because sixteen teenage superheroes have entered into a deadly game of cat-and-laser-shooting-adolescent.  And only one will leave.

Shaw is on the run.  He’s been running for hundreds of years.  ’Cause he’s immortal.  And pissed off.  Now he’s in Chicago, surrounded by gangsters, police, and other mystical creatures who want him dead.  But that’s okay, because he’s got a closet full of Tommyguns and a pack full of smokes.  This is Chin Music.  Steve Niles (30 Days of Night) and Tony Harris (Starman, Ex Machina) have combined their mighty horror powers to produce a moody ongoing series of sci-fi scares and supernatural action.  If you loved this week’s Ten Grand, you’ll dig Chin Music.

Thanks to this next trade paperback, I just jumped backwards in time and change the course of the day so that Free Comic Book Day occurred on May the 4th.  That’s right, time travel.  Comeback is a political thriller basted in a thick coding of time travel mayhem.  Two agents for a prestigious time traveling firm (who you hire to go back in time and stop you from dying) get stuck in the past, chased by the FBI, and their own bosses, who’ve come back to “wipe out the evidence”.  Think Criminal meets Back to the Future.

Finally, because it was FCBD (meaning it was a madhouse), we’ll end tonight on a simply mathematical picture of the Jake figure from the Adventure Time Pop Vinyl figures coming in this Wednesday (also including Finn and Marceline).

Comic List Highlights (2/27/2013)

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Feb 232013
 

Hey, everyone, come on, grab your friends!  We’ll go to very distant lands!

Jake and Finn have stopped playing with BMO and are back for a second round of Adventure Time trade paperback mathematics!  Adventure Time volume two collects issues five through nine of the series that’s sweeter than Peppermint Butler.  Within these flippin’ sweet pages are stories of Finn and Jake turning into robots, traveling in Princess Bubblegum’s time machine, and laying some smack down on the Ice King.  Make your kids (or, hell, yourself) happy and pick it up!

Liches and zombies need not apply.

Scott Snyder just finished what is sure to become a classic Joker story in the main Batman series, but, before he made a name for himself, Snyder wrote one of the creepiest runs of Detective Comics ever.  Set during the period of time where Dick Grayson was Batman, this extended run has an entirely different tone from other Batman books as Grayson is all about the sarcasm and acrobatics, both brought to life by Jock’s expressive pencils.  Faced with a complicated murder mystery to solve, Grayson must team-up with Commissioner Gordon to crack the case.  Not only do Gordon and Grayson share sleuthing duties, but the story is also evenly split between them.  Gordon must deal with the arrival of his prodigal son, James, Jr., who may or may not be entirely sane.  Snyder is incredibly dept at pacing horror and suspense on the page, a talent uses handily during many of Gordon and James, Jr.’s scenes together.  Just remember to watch out for that water running under the bathroom door.

One thing you will certainly not find in Image Comics Five Weapons miniseries is a sorting hat.

That just makes it all the more important to choose wisely when you’re enrolling in The School of Five Weapons, because the weapon you choose will define the rest of your life.  Knives, staves, archery, exotics, and guns may be deadly, but they have nothing on the brain of Tyler, the most recent arrival to the premiere assassin school.  Join Jimmie Robinson (Bomb Queen), handling both art and writing duties, as he leads you through the halls of the deadliest high school in the country.  

Just don’t call it Harry Potter with guns.

Talking raccoons make every comic better.

Brian Michael Bendis got to sample the Guardians of the Galaxy in his recent run on Avengers Assemble, but now he launches deep into the stars with the beginning of another ongoing Guardians of the Galaxy series.  The first point one issue details the origins of Starlord, the boy from Earth who grows-up to lead the meanest bunch of space police in the universe.  With crisp, detailed artwork from Steve McNiven (Civil War), the addition of Iron Man, and the eminent Marvel Studios film adaptation the only reason to skip this book is if you’re off planet.

Comic List Highlights (2/8/2012)

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Feb 042012
 

Possibly you’re the kind of comic fan with refined tastes. You enjoy your caviar black, your bourbon warm, and your Rolls Royce.

If you share in respectable tastes such as those you might be inclined to pick up a copy of Thief of Thieves, a sequential periodical penned by two gentlemen of leisure known as Robert Kirkman and Nick Spencer. These two have earned the gentleman title through a succession of highly successful books, namely Walking Dead and Invincible for Mr. Kirkman and Morning Glories, Infinite Vacation, and Thunder Agents for Mr. Spencer. A classic heist scenario, Thief of Thieves is about a father who lives a secret life as a master thief…but maybe not for long, as the FBI is closing in. Sharpen your comic palette by giving Thief of Thieves a chance.

On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, we have the first issue of Adventure Time. Based off the popular, trippy Cartoon Network show, Adventure Time the comic is written by Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics webcomic acclaim. The Land of Ooo will be torn asunder during the first few issues as an old enemy returns, ready to stomp all over the lives of Finn and Jake. It’s gonna be lumpin’ amazerin!

And now a little item for those in the audience enjoy the ability to drink.

Normally, a pint glass with Batman plastered on it would be reason enough to get excited and drop some bank, but what if I told you this one had a Batmobile on it too.

And the phrase, “Wanna come to my Bat Cave?”

And “Chicks dig the ride!”

I think the appropriate answer would be, “Holy Bat Glass, Batman!”

Lastly, tonight, a creator shift change for a great book that’s been flying under the radar lately.

That book is Secret Avengers, which has, of late, been written by Warren Ellis (If you haven’t picked it up, do so. Some of the best one issue stories I’ve ever read.), but will now be written by popular Venom and Uncanny X-Force writter, Rick Remender. Not only does the book get a writing make over, but a couple new members join the team, too. Namely, Captain Britain and Hawkeye. Wait one more issue and you’ll also get the added benefit of Venom joining the team. With Remender’s credentials from Uncanny X-Force, primarily in the violence and sensation aspects, this version of the Secret Avengers should be insane action all the time.