Thursday Comic

Gunnerkrigg Court, Volume 1: Orientation - Tom Siddell

Following the death of her mother, Antimony Carver begins boarding at Gunnerkrigg Court - supposedly a school, even if it more closely resembles a sprawling industrial facility. There are strange secrets hidden in its labyrinthine halls, and that's before we get to the mysterious forest over the river and the bizarre nature of some of the students. Robot birds; a girl with dirty, pitch-black eyes and an attitude to match; a demonically possessed soft toy; suicidal fairies and a ghost who can't frighten anyone... It's a good thing that Antimony seems able to remain utterly unflappable, whatever she faces.

Looking at the first three chapters of the fourteen contained in this volume, I can kind of see why Siddell had to start out posting his series on the web (here) instead of being snatched up by a publisher right away. The art, at first - especially and crucially when it comes to Antimony herself - is a bit ropey. But by chapter 4 Siddell starts to get into his stride, and shortly the story is being told in exactly the kind of rich, sumptuous, beautifully coloured artwork that I was so keen to own on glossy, high-quality paper. Antimony, her friends, the imaginative settings and creatures are all rendered in a simply gorgeous style.

But it isn't just the imagery that's gorgeous. Gunnerkrigg Court has a heart, a sense of humour and a vibrant, unstoppable imagination. Always understated and reserved - like its heroine - this is a story that blindsides you with its sudden but carefully constructed moments of bittersweet emotion. This is absolutely one of my favourite comics - the perfect combination of art and character to appeal to me - so it's a no-brainer that I think Siddell deserves to get paid for his work. But given that it's also available on the web for free, you've got no excuse not to at least try it on for size.

Old Time Spacescape

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Image source

There's always an interesting arrangement of light, shadow and pastel colours to find around Saturn, and I rather like this Cassini image of Mimas against the rings, with smaller Epimetheus in the background.

Cassini made its all time closest approach to Mimas some time last week.

Times Saved Galaxy: 2

Holy moly, the final mission in Mass Effect 2 is pretty intense. Hats off to the people behind this: they made the game revolve around building a loyal team of nicely fleshed out characters, and then they made the final do-or-die mission one where, depending on your choices and performance mouseover for mild spoiler.

I've said before that I think linear plot and gameplay are perfectly capable of serving one another (although that doesn't mean I don't think we should explore the world of other possibilities) and I think this is the perfect demonstration of that. I wanted to do well at this mission, because I gave a damn about the characters in my team.

I'm also liking the way you get to keep playing after the credits roll, and each team member has a couple of lines about how things turned out and the choices you made. I'm always amazed at epic, far-ranging games that can't be bothered to throw in a little epilogue.


In other news, before embarking on this last mission, I found I didn't have enough cash left to buy any guns or armour, so I decided to stock up on pets instead. At the very least all these different coloured fish should look quite pretty when they're all floating belly-up. Kind of disappointed in my space hamster, though.


And last, but far from least, it figures that it's only just before the last mission that I suddenly stumble on the commander's en suite. To think I've been peeing next to the rank and file all this time.

Buzzing Hornets Nest

My Googlemail account is basically my Internet-facing email, so I'm not too concerned about my own privacy, but if I was, for example, a therapist using my account to email my patients, a journalist emailing whistle-blowers, or just an ordinary person who emails both nice people you know in person and crazy internet trolls - then I would be pretty angry at Google right now.

The thing is, when I see people complaining about this, I also see those usual knee-jerk commenters who don't bother to actually read the posts and regurgitate the same bogus information. At the moment you need to remember this:

• If you selected 'Nah, just take me to my inbox' when you were first notified about Buzz, you still have Buzz.
• If you click 'Turn off Buzz' at the bottom of your gmail page, you still have Buzz, you've just hidden it from yourself.
• If you have a public Google profile, you should probably take a look at it and make sure you aren't broadcasting any email contacts ('followers') you don't want to.

Of course, I say at the moment, because, after their initial, predictable "No, you do like it!" response, Google have promised to change things... over the next few days.

For those of us who've been using Blogger and other Google services, this reluctance and then slow reaction are pretty much what we expect, but it shows up Google's hubris that they seem to think they can still do this here. An hour is an age in Facebook-time. People go crazy if they can't access Twitter for fifteen minutes. If Google want to break into this market, they need to realise that a service built on small, frequent communications needs a response time of minutes (although the users would prefer seconds).

But probably the most surprising thing of all is that this happened in the first place. Obviously, Google wanted to give birth to its social network whole-formed from its Gmail contact lists, which isn't all that surprising given that their business model is basically making money from our information (see also: the targeted ads you get in your Gmail inbox). But if they had just peeked out of their own little world for a moment or two, they would have seen that nothing is kicking up Internet shitstorms lately as much as privacy concerns over social networking.

It's like Google just walked into an airport and started joking loudly about exploding underpants. Where have they been all this time?

Friday Hoff Blogging

Thursday Comic

Birds of Prey: Dead of Winter - Gail Simone, Nicola Scott et al.

"At one time I ran this operation like a finely tuned espionage machine," Oracle muses at one point in this last collection of Gail Simone's issues for Birds of Prey, "now the cast is much bigger, and a lot harder to control." Which kind of says it all.

Although the series has once again found stability in its artwork with the fine pencils of Nicola Scott, what was once a tightly focused story about a handful of second-tier Gotham superheroes (as well as not-quite heroes Creote and Savant) has expanded into the kind of Galaxy-sized, obscurely grounded and ridiculously framed story that is what so many people (including me) dislike about superhero comics.

I can kind of see why Simone took the chance to move to another series at this point, but for her Birds of Prey swansong she makes sure to try bring back a couple of her best characters, including (yay!) Creote, and her skill at characterisation and dialogue makes sure I'm never really bothered by the fact I don't know what's going on half the time.

Still, reading these books has helped me to feel like less of a complete philistine when it comes to what is obviously a very important part of western comics culture, and I'll probably make a half-arsed effort to read the further adventures of Oracle, Huntress and the rest when I can.

Dead Fish

So I guess I just found out the hard way that you have to feed your pets in Mass Effect 2. Kind of glad I didn't buy that expensive hamster now.

Friday Clangers Blogging

Thursday Comic

Birds of Prey: Blood and Circuits - Gail Simone et al.

The penultimate collection of Gail Simone's run on DC Comics' Birds of Prey sees Black Canary leave the team to focus on raising the nine year old girl she's rescued from being trained as a lethal assassin - leaving Oracle to inadvertantly bite off more than she can chew. Seeing the core cast of characters broken up so that the team can become more of a dumping ground for DC's lesser known superheroines might have fazed a lot of writers, but Simone shows her excellent knack for characterisation by lending great dialogue to the likes of Judomaster and Manhunter.

The art also stabilises for the first time since Ed Benes left the book, with Nicola Scott and Paulo Siqueira providing just the kind of bold artwork the series needs.

"With no power comes no responsibility."

On the off-chance that you've missed the hype-machine gearing up for anti-superhero movie Kick-Ass, allow me to provide you with a link to the official site.

Monday Movie: Good Night, And Good Luck

It's the fifties, and Senator McCarthy is conducting a witch hunt against Americans he suspects of being 'card carrying' communists. Anyone who criticises him risks being accused themselves. But following on from a tangential story, incisive newsman Edward R. Murrow decides to tackle McCarthy head-on, even as his bosses warn him that they can get better ratings in much less risky ways.

George Clooney's second film as director is a far more sedate work than his energetic debut, with snappy banter and gorgeous black-and-white cinematography. Good Night, And Good Luck does little to explore the emotions of its characters or to try and provoke outrage - instead it's more of an urbane civics lesson, presenting Murrow's views on American discourse in his own eloquent words.

Space Hamster

Almost 8000 credits? Do I have to feed it? I don't want to come back after a long mission and find the thing dead and rotting in its space hamster wheel.

First Impressions

Okay, I've finally been able to affect some mass. My first impressions are rather positive. One thing I thought was especially weak about the first Mass Effect was the beginning, which just dumps you in the boonies of an (admittedly very pretty) alien planet and then leaves you to wander around for a few minutes. Number 2 starts all guns blazing, with your lovely spaceship from the first game getting blown to bits with you inside it, then dropping you in the middle of a battle at the shadowy research project that has resurrected your ruined body.

The process of importing your character from the first game has possibly been a bit oversold - I can certainly see all the hooks where you can fill in the backstory of a brand new character. But it's possible that my previous good deeds with respect to Wrex and Tali may yet have some effect that I couldn't have got otherwise.

Speaking of which, I'm already satisfied when it comes to two of the main reasons I bought the thing: Martin Sheen's 'Illusive Man' casts a sardonically voiced shadow over events, and the very first character you bump into on your first proper mission is none other than Tali (which seems like a bit of a coincidence, but I'm the last person to complain).

I can also see quite a few improvements on the things I didn't like so much about the first game - the dialogue (at least so far) is focused more on the personal than on broad exposition, the cover system has been improved, your comrades seem more dynamic and useful in combat, and I also like the fact that the weapons feel a lot meatier - the guns in Mass Effect 1 just didn't feel like they had any punch to them.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have renegade robots to shoot.

Friday So Near Yet So Far Blogging

Mass Effect 2 was released in the UK today. Bought it in HMV during my lunch break. Get home, ready to play...

Guy at the till didn't remove the red security doodad. Can't - according to the Internet - remove it without possibly damaging the disk or the case.

Fuck.

I'm sure HMV will remove the thing if I take it back with the receipt, but I didn't buy the game on release day just to gaze longingly at the cover.

Thursday Comic

Birds of Prey: Perfect Pitch - Gail Simone et al.

When one of Helena Bertinelli's students gets in trouble with a gang, she does what any inner-city teacher would: use her secret vigilante identity, her family ties to the Gotham City mob and her newfound friendship with superhero information broker Oracle to enact a complex sting operation that will put everyone involved behind bars. Meanwhile, shadowy forces are conspiring to attack Oracle's operation at its most vulnerable points - her friends.

This volume begins with some rather nice artwork by Bruce Timm and David Lopez (above), before passing the paintbrush through a few different hands and wavering around the weakest point I've seen the artwork reach on this series. On the writing side, the most interesting thing here is the One Year Later event that DC Comics pulled across all its series, which seems like it was kind of intended as a chance for non-regulars to hop onto some superhero comics. But Simone uses the device purely as a writing, rather than marketing device. If anything, after the story leaps ahead, it's even more entangled in previous Birds of Prey storylines and even more affected by wider events in the DC Universe.

As always, though, Simone's writing - and in particular her characterisations - keep me hooked in spite of all the DC baggage, even if this is the point that Creote and Savant, two of my favourite members of the team, get left by the wayside.

Spirit is not Dead, but...

"Spirit is not dead; it has just entered another phase of its long life," said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "We told the world last year that attempts to set the beloved robot free may not be successful. It looks like Spirit's current location on Mars will be its final resting place."

Read the rest.

As always, Emily Lakdawalla has an insightful analysis.

"Favour... returned." *Dies*

Continuing in the vein of previous on-rails shooter The Umbrella Chronicles, which related the downfall of Umbrella in re-imagined sequences from Resident Evils 0, 1 and 3, The Darkside Chonicles fills in the remaining gaps, covering the events of Resident Evil 2, RE: Code Veronica and leading up to RE4. Although, following on from The Umbrella Chronicles (henceforth just 'UC'), and what many people saw as the far superior Dead Space: Extraction (I wouldn't know, Extraction gave me motion sickness) it seems like DSC (that's Darkside Chronicles, let's keep with the acronyms) may well fall through the cracks. Which is a shame, because it's an altogether, slicker, tighter, classier affair than UC, featuring some of the series' most memorable major and minor characters and recounting its most character-driven stories. Where UC gave us Jill Valentine snapping a zombie's neck with her bare thighs, DSC shows us Annette Birkin shedding a single perfect tear for the neglect she's shown her daughter. Where UC is full of characters uttering weird non-sequiturs and humourless observations of the obvious, DSC has a dry sense of humour and some lively banter.

It's also, it must be said, a huge technical improvement over UC. It looks a lot better, properly portraying the atmospheric environs of RE2 and RECV, and lending the characters an appearance that's both slightly more realistic and a lot more stylish. The finicky headshots have been improved, becoming much easier to pull off on lower difficulty settings. And replaying the chapters to improve your score is made more palatable by their being shorter and more numerous, and with less protracted boss fights. It's also now possible to focus on improving your score in different areas at a time, so, for example, you don't have to try and juggle blasting huge numbers of enemies with lining up headshots. And the rewards and archives you get are more interesting as well, including character models, voice recordings, and bonus costumes.

But I'm always the first person to complain about the exaltation of the technical when it comes to video games. There's one reason I was so keen to get DSC, and that's my enormous love for Resident Evil 2, which, as you may remember me mentioning about a million times, is one of my all-time favourite games.

The transition to rail shooter naturally distorts the storyline and the atmosphere of the original - and destroys the sense of exploration and strategy. But it's also clear that this transition has been handled by people who genuinely care about the story, and who are interested in trying to draw out its strengths. So, although Leon and Ada now only spend just a little time with one another, their few scenes together are more touching, and their attraction is depicted in a more low-key, less melodramatic fashion. In the same way, without giving anything away, the original “Killed the boss! Fuck yeah!” ending is morphed into something more measured, almost understated (at least by Resident Evil standards), which focuses on the emotional fallout for Sherry Birkin.


I've noted before that RE2 has probably one of the best supporting casts in the RE franchise, and that's kind of acknowledged here by the way a lot of them seem to just turn up for a cameo death scene. Still, Chief Irons is suitably deranged, and Marvin Branagh's fate might potentially make you jump the first time you play through that chapter. And if these guys seem to get a bit of a short shrift, it's more than made up for by the skilful way the game handles the bigger players. Annette Birkin, in particular, is portrayed as less of a two-note maniac and more of a conflicted and tragic figure (even if her introductory monologue does meander into complete gibberish).

It's harder for me to gauge the Code Veronica chapters, because that's now the only mainline Resi game I've never played. Still, Claire is one of my favourite characters in the series, and these chapters are made a lot of fun by her alternately exasperated and flirtatious banter with irrepressible, wise-cracking Steve Burnside; by a delightfully ostentatious and playful villain; and by some truly engaging environments ranging from a ruined prison camp to an Antarctic base.

The weakest part of the game, for me, was the third set of chapters, relating Leon's first and last mission with Krauser (both of whom reappear, this time on opposing sides, in RE4). Although this part of the game at first seems kind of clever, given how it's actually presented as the framing narrative for the other two stories, it's also pretty light on storytelling and character, quite tedious at times, and seems to end rather abruptly - unceremoniously jumping from one boss fight straight to the climactic one. (I've also got to mention that I found the 'losing' ending that you can get for this sequence to be somewhat stronger than the 'winning' one, which makes me wonder why they included both.)

By focusing on the stories of Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield, Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles presents a tighter, more focused game than The Umbrella Chronicles, while also improving on many of that game's flaws. The standard of writing is relatively high, and I found the action to be fun and challenging while avoiding becoming repetitive or tedious (at least in the RE2 and RECV chapters). If you're a fan, I think you'll find this to be a classy, good-looking re-imagining of the originals. And if you just want to shoot zombies and monsters with your Wii-mote, there's that too.

The Last Lovecraft

"This is fucking crazy, man, there's no such thing as fish people, dude!"

Hat tip Twitch, as usual.

Thursday Book

Predator's Gold - Philip Reeve

When it came to the first book in Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines series, the thing I liked best was the awkward, distrustful romance that blossomed - hesitantly - between naive townie Tom and vengeful, disfigured Hester. And the thing I liked least was the half of the book set in (mobile, predatory) London - a needless side-story that seemed to drag.

The good news is that this first sequel stays focused and keeps along at a fair clip. And if the first book seemed to revolve around just two or three clever ideas, Reeve pulls out the stops here, with imaginative contraptions and diabolical villains galore.

What I didn't appreciate so much was the way the relationship between Tom and Hester progressed. It's a huge and unnecessary cliche that sequels always feel the need to break up a couple and get them back together (because, after all, what else can the writer do with them?), and here it feels especially contrived and tiresome. After seeing these two face the gravest dangers together, nurturing unexpected trust and affection, I was kind of looking forward to seeing them face up to new dangers together, and in that respect I found this book a bit disappointing.

But I'll still be picking up the next one when I've got a bit further through my pile of reading material...

Butterfly Fantasy 2

I thought some of you might like this online spot-the-difference game, Butterfly Fantasy. It's casual to the max - the gameplay pretty much an arbitrary layer over the artwork - but the images tell a modern fantasy story that rather grabbed me.

I've linked to episode 2, because I found the first episode to be a bit downbeat and dreary, and the third is just a drawn-out deus ex machina - but the second shows some great, imaginative storytelling in its wordless images. By turns uplifting, dramatic and sad.

(Although one thing that bugs me is that these are clearly moths, not butterflies.)