Category: News

It’s been six years since id Software’s last title (the expansion [[[Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil]]]) and in that time, lead programmer John Carmack has crafted one of the most technically sound shooters for this generation of consoles. RAGE starts out strong, as a tale of a selection of pseudo super soldiers are sent into stasis prior to a giant asteroid crashing into the Earth. Only one survives the damage, and you play this voiceless protagonist, in various missions across the post-apocalyptic wastelands. Sadly, this is where the story both begins and ends, as storytelling wasn’t obviously the focus of the game’s long six year development cycle. Instead, your character plays errant boy to anyone who asks, going on fetch-quest after fetch-quest, retrieving this and that for various folk in order to ultimately…just repeat doing that.

It’s not to say that the game is no fun. Far from it, actually, as the fetch-quests lead up to a series of fantastic gun battles and large set pieces. The wastelands are host to many manner of bandits, scabbers and sundry evil-type folk, and each character has strong and wholly different character AI that behaves uniquely in battle. Enemies don’t just seek cover and shoot blindly, some will charge at you, some will flank you, and all will try to bring you down with a ferocity that would make a Bengal tiger run in fear. The animations of reach enemy is also unique; shoot them in the side as they charge and they tumble down, staggering to regain their footing, all the while still closing on you. They leap from walls, run at you screaming…it’s all very intense.

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There are few songwriters – few writers – I respect more than Pete Townshend. Were this a music column I’d go into detail why I hold this belief, but today in this venue he’s a means to an end.

Last week, Pete (okay, we’re not on a first name basis; the only time we were within 10 feet was when he bashed my boss in the back of his head with his guitar) accused Apple’s iTunes online retail store of being a “digital vampire.” His analysis was fraught with mistakes and revealed a genuine lack of knowledge of the situation. He was defending a system that treated him and his band, The Who, very, very well – a system that no longer exists as a creative outlet for newcomers going back at least a full generation. He also mistook iTunes for a label and not what it actually is: a retail outlet. A very successful one, but then again Pete’s net worth is in the neighborhood of $75,000,000 – a true one-percenter – so success isn’t the issue here.

What does this have to do with the wonderful world of comics? Hang on. I’ll get there.

Pete also said “It would be better if music lovers treated music like food, and paid for every helping, rather than only when it suited them … Why can’t music lovers just pay for music rather than steal it?” That’s the heart of my diatribe today: people who sort of steal artists’ works instead of paying for it.

Bootlegging is a serious issue, but more a moral one than financial. Sure, Disney and Warners will bitch about all the milions they’re losing but that’s because they see every bootlegged item as a lost sale. Few are.

When it comes to comics, sometimes it’s a matter of convenience. Some people boot stuff they’ve already purchased because they prefer reading on a tablet. After all, we’re in our third generation of comics fans who go bugfuck whenever somebody folds the cover back in order to read the damn thing. Still others are sampling new wares: with literally over 300 new comics released each month and maybe a third of them brand-new titles or “reboots” (a word with unintended irony) a reader can’t afford to sample even a fraction of the new stuff.

And then there are the idiots. Stupid people who live the life of Wile E. Coyote until they finally look down.

Our buddy Rich Johnston at Bleeding Cool reports of a guy named Stephen Chandler out in Glasgow, Scotland who is offering every comic book published each month by the “major” publishers (DC, Marvel, IDW, Image, Dark Horse, Dynamite, and perhaps others) in electronic form for the low price of about $27.00 a month – 20 Euros, so the price fluctuates.

His is a for-profit operation. No matter what you think of readers downloading comics illegally, this guy is taking money out of publishers’ pockets. Most publishers can’t afford that; even the big guys are responsible for delivering an acceptable bottom line to their masters.

Steve, pal… look. Maybe your heart is in the right place. Most comics readers pay more than $27 a month for a fraction of the content you’re delivering on disc. And you’re entitled to a reasonable profit for your work. But that’s only in the sense that Al Capone was entitled to a reasonable profit for his work.

Eventually, Wile E. Coyote looked down. So will you, Steve. You work and perhaps live near the All-Saints Secondary School. You might dine at the Delhi Darber. Maybe you drink at the Aushinairn Tavern and shop at Asda Robroyston. Or perhaps you go to the Food Cooperative off of Wallacewell Road.

In other words, Steve, you’re an idiot.

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil

And those are just the characters he created for DC. We won’t even mention Spider-Man, Dr. Strange, Captain Atom, Blue Beetle, the Question, Mr. A…

But who, you may still ask, is Steve Ditko? By a handy coincidence, there was an hour-long documentary four years ago asking that very same query…

Long may he wave.

In our continuing coverage of comics crossover with #OccupyWallStreet, we have this photo by Marcus Santos for the New York Daily News on how Zuccotti Park protestors spent their Halloween, as well as this appearance last night from Countdown With Keith Olbermann on Current TV:

Hat tip to Peter Sanderson and evil twin Torsten Adair.

In what may be the really profitable digital strategy for DC, Batman: Arkham City, the critically acclaimed sequel to Batman: Arkham Asylum from Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and Rocksteady Studios has become the Highest Reviewed Video Game of 2011 on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, and has shipped more than 4.6 million units worldwide since its October 18 launch in North America.

These sales figures are more than double the number of units the previous title sold in the same time period, and has already solidified the games rank as a contender for one of the top-selling titles of this year. Also, the game currently stands as the highest reviewed PS3 and 360 game of this year on Metacritic.com with average scores of 96 and 95 respectively.

Building on the intense atmosphere and story from the original game, Batman: Arkham City drops players into a section of Gotham, shut off from the main city, and over run by the inmates of the former asylum. Gangs wage war against each other and a new threat looms to take over Gotham as a whole. Cameos from Catwoman, Two-Face and more from Batman’s Rogues Gallery litter every single scene in the game, and coupled with the excellent storytelling, make it one of, if not the best superhero game ever. Look for our review in a day or two.