Author: Rick Marshall

A series of posts on the website for Republican presidential candidate John McCain has gamers up in arms, and has earned attention from some high-profile media outlets for the strange decision to target Dungeons & Dragons players, of all things.

In an August 1 post on the official McCain campaign website, spokesperson Michael Goldfarb said of a recent New York Times blog post:

… in their new role as bloggers, the paper’s editors seem to have all the intelligence and reason of the average Daily Kos diarist sitting at home in his mother’s basement and ranting into the ether between games of dungeons and dragons.

While this mention didn’t generate much commotion at the time, it was Goldfarb’s decision to negatively namecheck D&D a second time just a few weeks later — a day after the end of the popular gaming convention Gen Con — that had everyone (including online culture blog BoingBoing) wondering whether the McCain staffer has some longstanding issues with the popular role-playing game and its fans.

It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman’s memory of war from the comfort of mom’s basement, but most Americans have the humility and gratitude to respect and learn from the memories of men who suffered on behalf of others.

It sounds to me like someone could never find enough friends to form a party… or maybe he was never allowed to be Dungeon Master. Either way, I can’t help but raise an eyebrow at the decision to make an anti-D&D stance a theme in McCain’s presidential campaign.

It seems as if there’s as much chaos going on behind the scenes of the upcoming Punisher: War Zone film as a typical Frank Castle firefight these days. Earlier this year, various sites reported that the Lionsgate Studios project had its release date pushed back to December, but now that change appears to be just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to problems with the highly anticipated film.

Over on the website for the film’s director, Lexi Alexander, all references to Punisher have been deleted — including her praise for the ultra-violent "red band" trailer release that we linked to back in June. Beyond that, the Latino Review recently reported that the studio is pushing for a PG-13 rating for the film due to the success of the The Dark Knight, igniting a massive backlash among fans of the character, the trailer and, well… just about everything related to the project. Luckily, that rumor was later semi-squashed in a follow-up report on Latino Review.

Meanwhile, Heidi MacDonald points us to even more rumor-mill chatter about the film, its potential rating and whether Alexander still has a role in it.

So what’s the real story? No one really seems to know anymore — but everyone seems to have a source "close to the project" with an opinion.

Heck, my source tells me that they might scrap the project entirely and bring back Dolph Lundgren to play the character. After all, he did tell one of the villains in the 1989 Punisher film, "I’m Batman." Coincidence… or a return to the character almost a decade in the making?

Oh, and if you have a chance, be sure to check out the "Punisher vs. Punisher" video I came across on YouTube, comparing the 1989 and 2004 films.

Over at io9, the website’s resident comics expert Graeme McMillan has put together a nice analysis of the events leading up to the current "World’s End" relaunch of DC’s Wildstorm line. I was pleasantly surprised by the recent issues #1 of Wildcats and The Authority — mainly because I’ve been a fan of both these series for quite a while and been both terribly excited and subsequently disappointed by prior attempts at re-establishing the universe around each series.

The new Wildstorm status quo places its superheroes in a world ravaged by events that they share much of the blame for, and this dynamic provides the opportunity for stories that have always been relegated to one-shot or "What If?" status elsewhere. So, I guess you can color me intrigued.

Here, McMillan provides a quick assessment of recent Wildstorm history:

This isn’t the first time that the Wildstorm line has gone all out for change; in 2003, their Coup D’Tat series had the Authority depose the US Government and set themselves up as dictators of the United States, before they realized that they couldn’t be bothered with all the paperwork. But with fans still hurting about 2006’s failed Worldstorm relaunch (which died when Grant Morrison’s core two series Wildcats and The Authority disappeared after one and two issues, respectively), will even the end of the world get them interested in checking out the series again?

Like McMillan, I’m impressed with the decision to change the Wildstorm Universe so dramatically — and I’m also hoping there isn’t a deus ex machina in the works at this point. For more on the new Wildstorm U and some thoughts from creators on why it was necessary, head over to io9.