I admit it. No need to twist my arm behind my back and make me cry “Uncle! Uncle! Oh Uncle, why would you twist my arm like this? What have I ever done but love you!!!”…Ahem. I admit to you I am a nerd. A dweeb. A dorkus-milorkus. I have from time to time sat at a table with nothing more than a pile of books, dice, pencils, and Mountain Dew, all to play an evenings worth of Dungeons and Dragons. I have from time to time, fired up a video game system to bring death and destruction with linked Ions Cannons. I even admit that I know that Ion Cannons are primarily used to destroy shields in the X-Wing vs. Tie-Fighter series… so saying I would use them to bring death was a false statement.   Nerdy enough? Thought so. My collective of FOMAFers… I return once again to tickle your faces, as I bring you another webcomic to toss into your web feeder gizmo-gadgets. I bring you “Full Frontal Nerdity”! 

Born as a sister comic to the popular Nodwick series by Aaron Williams, Full Frontal Nerdity takes the “Gamers at a Table” concept to fruition. Updated every week, Aaron delivers a ton of yuck-yucks to those of us who have spent an evening or two under the thumb of a wicked DM. For those of you who don’t know what a DM is… you may want to wikipedia “Dungeons and Dragons”. Don’t worry, I’ll wait. Back? Good. You may have noticed that “Full Frontal Nerdity” doesn’t have an entry on said online encyclopedia… so, consider the history lesson here over. How about instead we open up the floor to the humor.

FFN places us (generally) at the table of three live (plus one webcam dude) gamers. The jokes generally stem from traditional things we nerdy-nerds tend to deal with. From the DM who invents problems and can’t out-think his players, to the players who simply swing their axe at any problem that comes to them. Aaron obviously knows his RPG jokes down pat. While certainly less accessible then some of my other picks, it didn’t take long to scour through the archives of FFN to determine I had to share it with you. There’s enough pop culture reference as well as ventures outside the gaming, that are too good to pass up. It also didn’t hurt that my fellow Unshaven Comic creator (and my roommate, and one of my best friends of 15+ years….) told me about it, and even helped pick the list of examples to share with you. What list you say?

You walk down the dimly lit corridor. You notice cobwebs flickering in the torch light, in every corner. The dungeon smells of sulfer, rotting meat, and Calvin Klein’s Obsession… And then from out of the darkness a horrible giant list of comics confronts you!!

Roll 2D20, and see if you make your will save before checking these out:

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From Elisabeth Rappe at Cinematical: First Look at Downey Jr. as Iron Man in Sequel.

It’s so geeky to say so, my childish heart of hearts just leaps at a photo like this. Iron Man was definitely an amazing way to kick off last summer, and it helps erase the pain of this year’s superhero film to know that Iron Man 2 is in the wings.

Now
come on, Favreau! Give us a photo of Scarlett Johannson or Mickey
Rourke in costume! We have a long way to go, and we need something to
make the long, long months even more unbearable.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. III: Century #1
: “1910”
By Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill
Top Shelf, April 2009, $7.95
 

The usual rule in comics is that nothing with two or more colons in its title – not to mention two or more separate numbering schemes – is nothing but rubbishy hackwork, and should be avoided. In this, as in so much else, Alan Moore is the Great Exception, as his newest miniseries comes with a jaw-breaker of a title that sounds like a piece of summer crossover from a stranger and much more literary world than our own.

This volume begins the third major “[[[League of Extraordinary Gentlemen]]]” story – last year’s [[[Black Dossier]]] doesn’t quite count, for complicated Moorian reasons – and it continues with the survivors of the team from the first two stories (Mina Harker and a rejuvenated Alan Quatermain posing as his own son), augmented by several more fictional characters (Orlando, Raffles, Carnacki) to continue their work preserving England from obscure horrors, reporting in to the secret group headed by Mycroft Holmes.

There will be two more volumes in this story – each set in, and titled after, a different and widely spaced year in the last century – so 1910 is mostly set-up. Moore re-introduces the League and sets them to squabbling, since superteams must always fight among themselves. The battling is less ominous this time around: none of the team are as immediately dangerous as Mr. Hyde, nor as sneakily obnoxious as the invisible Mr.Griffin. (So we get Raffles’s sniffing attempts to maintain his requisite stiff upper lip in circumstances he never expected and Orlando engaging in high-quality mincing whenever the slightest opportunity arises, along with Mina’s usual Serious Girl act and very little from the increasingly colorless Alan.)

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