All-New Captain America

Continuing on with the comic book talk theres a few other series I've started reading that show some promise. First I will blather on about what I think about the All-New Captain America? Read on and hear the good word my fellow nerds!

I really like this series so far because it feels fresh but has a certain amount of familiarity to it. Kinda like switching from briefs to boxers one day....or not. I guess since I have no real nostalgic memories or expectation tied to this series I may be in the minority here. But I've seen and read enough Avengers that I know who Captain America is. And honestly after Hawkeye, the Cap was probably my least favourite Avenger. 

ALL HAIL HYDRA!

Just kidding.  Fuck Hydra.

This review was approved by HYDRA
All hail Hydra!

But I'm not kidding about Captain America. He just never did it for me. Give me Thor, Give me the Hulk. Give me Hawkeye! Wait WHAT am I saying! No Hawkeye! 

ANYWAY moving on.

Spoilers to follow!!!! Consider yourself warned.

Ok now that the traditional disclaimer has been done hopefully there will be no nerd rage in response to what comes next. Who am I kidding, no one reads this blog anyway, and if this is where you come to get your comic book info, your probably in the wrong line bucko.

Soooo. Captain America.

So somewhere in the history of Steve Rogers, he goes to a Dimension Z, finds a new family, has an adoptive son who seems like an impulsive dick, loses his super powers by having the super solider serum sucked out of his body, grows old and passes on the Shield to Sam Wilson. Sam Wilson is the Falcon. But now he's also Captain America. I love it.

Somehow I feel like this could be President Obama
moonlighting as a super hero. If I was president I would make sure
as fuck I had a rad comic book I could call my own. 

So now Steve Rogers works behind the scenes helping Sam as the new Cap, who has teamed up with Roger's step son, Nomad. The cool thing is that Sam is still learning how to use his shield. He's interesting because of his flaws. His heart is in the right place, but he doesn’t come off as a super talented know it all. Issue 1 starts off with the team infiltrating a secret Hydra base and ends on a cliff hanger with our heroes neck deep in some serious shit. I don't know all of the original Hydra bad guys, but I have a feeling theres quite a few iconic ones that we see...

I would recommend this to people who are looking to get into comics. The story seems to hold some promise. Visually it's great and I look forward to reading the rest of the issues on my stack.

So what's your thoughts? Do you love or hate the the Cap? Let me know down below. Unless your my wife. I don't want you to yell at me for the mint I dropped on comics this week...

The Superior Spider-Man

So much awesome!

So as things intensify in my program reading for fun tends to get put on the back burner. It's not that I

don’t have the time. It's more of an issue of being too tired to actually have the mental power to focus and enjoy reading a good novel for any length of time.The thing is I really want to read. Then I hint on the idea that maybe something shorter and more visual might scratch that itch. I hit up a my local spot and chatted up the owner and he hooked me up with the first collected volume of The Superior Spider-Man*.

I've really enjoyed the story so far. In fact I just finished reading the second volume and can't wait to pick up the last four volumes in the series. The nice thing is that I've been told that series leads up to the new Amazing Spider-Man series which I have the first sixteen issues on the ready to read pile.

So if your like me and you're a fan of Spider-Man I would suggest picking this up and giving it a read.

*SPOILER ALERT!

The premise is that previous to the start of this series Doctor Octopus was dying. In order to save himself he did some sort of switch that put Peter Parker in his body, and him in his. Now Peter is gone and Otto Octavius has taken over with the goal of being a better- in fact- Superior Spider-Man!   

The Ultimate Forgotten Realms

A while back I read a blog post (I can't recall the blog just now ) that hoped that “The Sundering”, the relaunch of 5e Realms, would basically shatter the Realms into an infinite number of alternate Realms. This would allow Wizards of the Coast to have their own official version, and each DM to have his own version in which events would play out in their own unique way. The idea would be akin to Marvel's infinite alternate universes.

I love this idea. It feels liberating to me. For a while now I've had this idea percolating in the back of my mind of starting with the the Grey Box, City of Splendours, and maybe a few other supplements and running an Ultimate Forgotten Realms campaign using D&D 5e.

The idea would be to run a campaign set in Waterdeep with a fresh take on things. The players wouldn’t be able to trust anything they previously knew about FR canon. Old villains, heroes, and history would be rewritten with new takes or twists and thus allowing the DM to have complete control over the campaign. I also think it would let many players sit back and enjoy playing knowing that they are the stars of the show and that they aren’t going to be shown up by Mary Sues or break the setting by doing some sort of crazy thing that might have an important realms shaking event. It would also allow the players and DM to learn about the world through play as opposed to having to earn a bachelors degree in FR history.

I suppose that for many groups out there this isn’t a new idea. Personally though I know this has been the case for the few groups I been with. Typically theres that guy that knows more than the DM and another that has no clue whatsoever. As a DM I can see this offering a happy medium solution. In the future I think I might begin a series of posts dedicated to my own personal Ultimate Forgotten Realms. If I suddenly fall off the face of the internet you know that Ed Greenwood has sent his Realms Lore Canon Ninja hit squad after me.

Guardians of the Galaxy

I've known for while that this movie was coming. To be honest I didn't really give a shit. But I have to say after watching this trailer I think I just might like this movie. Hell I might even give the comic a shot. A friend of mine is following the series and says its pretty rad so maybe he's on to something here.

The Digital Dark Age: Appendix N

So heres a list of the major influences on the Digital Dark Age Campaign. None of it is presented in any particular order of importance. It's a sort of a freak show of science fiction with tones of cyberpunk, noir, pulp, and of course weird. Some are fairly self explanatory, others not so much.

• The Hyperion Cantos (Dan Simmons)
• Ilium/Olympos Cycle (Dan Simmons)
• Red Harvest (Dashiell Hammett)
• The Takeshi Kovacs Trilogy/Market Forces (Richard K. Morgan)
• Hellboy/B.P.R.D comic series (Mike Mignola)
• Path of Fury/ Honorverse (David Weber)
• Neuromancer (William Gibson)
• Snowcrash (Neal Stephenson)
• Northwest Smith (C. L. Moore)
• The Shadow Over Innsmouth (H. P. Lovecraft)
• Star Wars (George Lucas)
• Total Recall (Philip K. Dick)
• Firefly/Serenity (Joss Whedon)
• Appleseed (Masamune Shirow)
• Warhammer 40,000/Necromunda (Games Workshop)
• Heavy Gear RPG (Dream Pod 9)
• Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0 RPG (R. Talsorian Games)
• Shadowrun RPG (FASA)

Ultimate Iron Man

Last night I finished reading the first trade paperback of Ultimate Iron Man. I'm not a comic book guy by a long shot, but I sure would love to be. I think one of the reasons I never got too much into comics in the first place was the same reason why a lot of people don't want to get into some RPG campaign settings. Forgotten Realms being a prime example. After years of publishing sometimes theres just too much baggage and history, and for some people that can be down right intimidating. For other's that's just too big a buy in to get into a story in the first place. That's why I think when Universe re-boots like the Marvel Ultimate series of comics happen it opens up the stage to a much wider audience and lets some fresh ideas and stories see print to boot.

So Iron Man. The first time I ever saw this guys costume I had made up my mind that I never wanted to know about this guy. Give me Wolverine, Spider-Man, but lets forget a guy who has a tin can for a face! Even when I found out he was a rich scientist dude, and perhaps was Marvel's version of one of my favorite's Batman, I could care less. Even Later on when the first movie came out I couldn't give a shit. Of course that would change one day when the movie was playing on TV and I had to admit that it actually wasn't that bad. In fact by the end of the movie I had to admit total defeat. This movie kicked ASS.

Of course I went to the theatre to see the 2nd movie, which rocked, and I can't wait to see the Avengers and Iron Man 3. Because Robert Downey Jr. is the man. I in fact have a man crush on him (but just don't tell Christian Bale, he has a temper...) So when my buddy was letting me borrow a stack of his comics, I was totally pumped to read this version of Iron Man and Tony Stark. The fact that this particular story arc was written by Ender's Game author Orson Scott Card was even more exciting.

So not knowing all that much about Iron Man's back story I could see the various core elements crop up here and there. It was a great read, and left me wanting more. I would reccomment it to anyone enjoys comics. For the record I felt like this was a good re-boot, unlike Forgotten Realms 4e, which in my opinion was bad re-boot. This isn't meant to be D&D 4e bashing, it's just that I don't really have anything else to compare it to, and also that sometimes things can and do go wrong in a re-boot. So if like me, you dig Iron Man and/or the movies, you should give this book a shot. Just my 2-cents.