A long time coming, it appears that DC is finally ready to give “Zee” the spotlight she’s deserved for so many years by awarding her an ongoing series! That’s great news for long time fans and what’s more, according to Dan Didio in his Newsarama interview, Paul Dini will be scripting (awesome!), with the great Stephane Roux on the art:
Nrama: Is the Zatanna monthly series being scheduled now? It’s Paul Dini that’s doing that, right?
DiDio: It sure is. Paul Dini’s doing it. Stephane Roux is the artist to start the series, and Chad Hardin will be working with him as well. And that should be coming out beginning this coming April.
CBR chatted with Stan Sakai about Usagi Yojimbo’s 25th Anniversary recently and there’s a lot of great info. to glean for those that may be unfamiliar with the long-eared ronin, or those always ready to learn more, including his storytelling influences, his involvement with the Laird & Eastman’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the longevity of the series and a little about Yokai, his 64-page fully painted graphic novel featuring Usagi and a host of Japan’s zaniest monsters which hits shelves later this month!
Jump to the article using the link above for more info. and a lengthy 10-page preview, but in the meantime, here’s what Sakai had to say about “A Town Called Hell,” from UY #125-126:
Issues #124-125 make up the two-part story arc ‘A Town Called Hell,’ which finds Usagi journeying to a small town where two warring factions struggle for control. ‘He aligns himself with one of the factions, and on the other side there’s a really skilled swordsman,’ Sakai said. ‘But I wanted to make a twist on that; usually, the two skilled guys, Usagi and the guy, would be very antagonistic toward each other. In this instance, I had them become friends. In the end, the other guy feels that Usagi has betrayed him, and that will pick up later on. I tried to make it so it’s not your typical sort of adventure story.’
Then, in issue 126, Usagi meets a floating head yokai, or haunt, but Sakai said this story is completely separate from the ‘Usagi Yojimbo: Yokai” graphic novel shipping in November. The artist said he is quite excited for the “Yokai” graphic novel, which he described as “my most ambitious Usagi project to date.’
My first exposure to Ratchet & Clank was with Up Your Arsenal on the PS2. I remember wanting to try the series thanks to the (extremely) positive buzz it had been receiving and due to its concept as an action-adventure platformer with lovable characters, an entertaining story, and an arsenal of crazy weapons that could be upgraded along with other RPG elements. So, one day, after a Statistics class I was taking I thought I’d reward myself for one reason or another and picked it up. And after firing up the game I quickly found that it was all I was hoping it would be, and more. Enjoyed it so much, in fact, that I turned right around and played it all over again just to experience the New Game+ features and its many bonuses, as well as tracking down the original title, and Going Commando so that I could see what else I had missed. Since, I’ve waited with child-like excitement for any announcement Insomniac Games has about the R&C series, I’ve played each of the games (many multiple times) and the series somehow manages to just get better and better.
Well, in addition to spending some time outdoors with my wife this weekend on one of our first warm/sunny days in quite some time, I was finally able to unwrap my own shiny copy of Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time (PS3) and happily spent a good 4-5 hours over the next couple evenings (thanks daylights savings time!) immersed in Insomniac’s fantastic little world and Rachet & Clanks newest adventure. The visuals have been compared to the quality of a Pixar film and I can’t disagree – its stunning work. Similiarly the whole crew on R&C deserves credit for th way they’ve brought the storyline through Tools of Destruction and Quest for Booty to fruition. It’s been an awful lot of fun and I’m hoping that this will prove a memorable conclusion to it – so far so good! The game play is as fun as ever in the Ratchet portions of the game (for this adventure the two are split for a good portion of the game) and I love the addition of the hover boots for jetting around in addition to all the frantic jumping and shooting as Ratchet nimbly takes it to the bad guys. Additionally, the guns are…uh…a blast and every bit as entertaining as they’ve been in the past (I think my favorite so far are the sniper rifle, the groovitron, and of course, Mr. Zurkon!). I don’t want to give too many story bits away but I’ve also enjoyed getting to know General Alister Azimuth (a Lombax survivor introduced in this game) and look forward to the inevitable twist and turns with his reveal as a Lombax survivor with a past connected to Ratchet. I’ve already encountered a couple, and a whopper of a reveal, and I’m sure there are a few turns left to take. What’s more, I also find that I’m loving the Clank portions of the game, because while Clank drips “cool” his game play portions in past games haven’t been as entertaining for me as the regular game play but this time I’m actually looking forward to the time I get to play as Clank thanks to his time manipulation abilities and the great time puzzles that allow you stretch your brain a little. The space travel is a pleasant surprise and traveling the galaxy in search of Zoni and other rewards is satisfying as all get out. There’s a ton to do in the game and in all honesty I haven’t even begun the exhaustive search for all the goodies it holds. Oh, and have I mentioned that Dr. freakin’ Nefarious is back yet!?
So, you can imagine that I’ll be playing this for a good while to come, juggling between it and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (PS3; and also a fantastic game) for the foreseeable future. There have been allusions that with the conclusion of this 3 game-spanning storyline that this may be the last Ratchet & Clank game, and that the finale will give fans something to chew on in that regard, but I’m truly hoping this isn’t the last we’ll see of Ratchet & Clank and that there’s a bit of tongue-in-cheek at the idea because it just keeps getting better and better.
I had meant to post about this earlier but time conspired against me and it wasn’t until clicking on his blog this morning while waiting for a lab to begin that I was reminded (with the force of a bag of bricks) just how cool Jake Parker’s “Inktober” event has turned out and that I needed to share that with you folks as soon as possible in the event you hadn’t yet visited his site. According to Jake:
It’s a month long appreciation of the art of drawing in ink and the practitioners that embrace that art. To celebrate I’m posting one ink drawing a day for the entire month. No pencils, no water colors, no photoshop, just the unadulterated black and white beauty of thick black ink on crisp white paper. Drawing with ink means commitment. There’s no hemming and hawing as to which pencil line you’re going to use, no sitting on the fence of values, no pussy footing with color. When you make your mark you better mean it. It’s black and white. True or false. On or off. And that’s what Inktober is all about.
It’s been a real treat checking in each day, and I hope you folks will stop by and celebrate Inktober with all the great pieces he’s dreamed up.
It doesn’t get much better than Lunar where “old school” RPG’s are concerned (as far as I’m concerned) and a new generation will be able to experience this classic as early as January 2010 when XSEED releases Lunar: Harmony of Silver Star for the PSP. In anticipation of its release in Japan a demo has just been made available on the Japanese Playstation store.
If interested, US residents can create a legitimate JP account on their systems (with a little help from google) and if you’re willing to put in the small effort you can download the demo on to your PSP and see what the updated graphics and presentation have done to enhance what was already one of the greatest RPG’s around.
As the Newsarama blog reported, Marvel’s Spider-WomanMotion Comic is now available for viewing on Hulu and I reckon that it’s well worth your time to fly on over and watch them in their entirety (at no cost). Now, I’ve been vocal at times about what I tend not to like about Brian Bendis’ writing on TheAvengers, but I’ve also been vocal when he gets it right — so don’t be too shocked when I say that I’ve almost always enjoyed his take on Jessica Drew a.k.a. Spider-Woman and that I was really looking forward to this series to see what he could do with her solo. Well, with an interesting “skull hunting” premise, the help of Alex Maleev’s masterful artwork (who, incidentally, draws the most beautiful Jessica Drew around) and the production values of the motion comic I have to say that I was sold early on and that having watched each of these that I’m definitely neck deep into the story (I’ve been invested in the character since the beginning so no need to convince me there).
So, enjoy the episodes if you haven’t yet downloaded them via iTunes and keep an eye out for the compilation of the first storyline in Spider-Woman Vol. 1: Agent of S.W.O.R.D. – which is where I’m really looking forward to experiencing this one most.
Given Sega’s recent announcement that Valkyria Chronicles 2 (PSP) would indeed be coming to U.S. shores in Summer 2010 I figured I’d best take a moment to voice my appreciation to everyone involved for the original game (which I’ll still be playing years from now) and for all of the fans out there that got the word out and made it the back door success story that it became. No doubt that support helped lead to the creation of a PSP-sequel where not only will we be able to experience a new chapter in Galia’s struggle against oppression, but another success on this platform could [potentially open the door for future console releases so here’s hoping VCII finds an even bigger audience than the first one ended up finding and that we get more of this great series as a result. Actually, thought this quote from the Playstation blog about the possibility of future games was pretty interesting in that regard:
We’re still developing Valkyria Chronicles 2 so, to be honest, we’re not really thinking about Valkyria Chronicles 3, 4 or 5 at this point. Just in terms of how our team develops titles and our way of thinking when we choose the platform for each of our titles, it’s not necessarily “let’s make a PS3 game!”. It’s more a case of “what kind of game do we want to make?”. For example, the first Valkyria was on the PS3 because of all the features we wanted to incorporate into the game and we felt the PS3 was the most suitable platform, so that’s how we develop games in our team. So potentially Valkyria Chronicles 3, or another title that we work on next might be on the PS3, it might still be on the PSP, we don’t know at this point.
Because we’ve already got experience of working on the PS3 and now we’re developing another game on the PSP, that just adds to our level of experience and understanding of these platforms and will definitely help us in determining what is the best platform for the next game that we make.
I know I’m excited about the opportunity to take the game with me when traveling, work, school, etc. given the addictive nature of the SRPG gameplay, and by all indications the presentation will be about as top-notch as the PSP can provide. Which is extremely impressive given what the trailer below indicates. So, stay tuned for more on the game and in the meantime feel free to check out the newly released Japanese trailer for an idea of what you can expect:
David Peterson recently spoke with Comic Book Resources about his new Mouse Guard project entitled Legends of the Guard. As part of the project Peterson will be coordinating his efforts between a hand-picked group of talented creators so as to allow them to tell stories or “legends” (that may or may not be MG canon) from a variety of perspectives.
Here’s what Peterson had to say about how these stories will fit into the greater Mouse Guard continuity, though be sure to check out the whole interview at the jump above for more:
As far as storyline and continuity goes, these individual stories will not necessarily be in “Mouse Guard” canon. “Actually, part of the beauty is that they can fall out of canon,” said Petersen. “As the title suggests, these are their legends. These are not necessarily true facts of what happens in the ‘Mouse Guard’ world. In fact, the pages that I’m going to be doing are the real mice of Mouse Guard telling stories. When one of their stories starts, that’s the guest artist and the guest artist’s story.
I normally wouldn’t pass along news about a particular book going back to the presses, but the end result is a new cover by Alan Davis (and hopefully a lot more Davis art in the months and years to come at Marvel) and that’s always post worthy!
Between late nights at work, home renovation projects and exams in my Archaeology and Near East courses I’ve had time to pretty much kiss my wife hello, eat dinner, work/study the rest of the day and get 5-6 hours of sleep so there’s not been a lot of extra time for all that much entertainment. I did manage to get some time in to watch an episode or two of NCIS and Castle over the last couple of days and in between my course reading I’ve been trying to sneak in some time to revisit Ed Brubaker’s Catwoman again, a series I really enjoyed several years ago (for the revolutionary effect it had on Selina as a character once more and for the fact that it drips style at every turn). I just finished Selina’s Big Score and hope to work my way through he first couple of dozen issues over the next few weeks. I didn’t forget how good these comics were, but they’re definitely that much better than I remember.
Other than that, I’ve been slowly making my way through Frank Herbert’s Dune on the way to and from work, and managed to find some time to sit down and playUncharted 2’s multi-player demo on the PSN, which is very addicting. I was really excited for the game to release after enjoying the first installment in the series so much and the frantic maps aren’t doing anything to hamper that enthusiasm. So fun! We’ve still got about a week to go before its release and I sure as heck hope I can find some time to immerse myself in the game because by all accounts its a really good one and leagues better than the first (which-in-and-of itself was a blast).
Anyway, if you haven’t checked it out and have access to the Playstation Network then do yourself a favor and fire Uncharted 2’s multi-player up while we await the release on October 13th. All kinds of fun to be had (even when you’re supposed to be doing something more “productive”)!
CBR 
Lunar: Harmony of Silver Star (PSP)
Between late nights at work, home renovation projects and exams in my Archaeology and Near East courses I’ve had time to pretty much kiss my wife hello, eat dinner, work/study the rest of the day and get 5-6 hours of sleep so there’s not been a lot of extra time for all that much entertainment. I did manage to get some time in to watch an episode or two of NCIS and Castle over the last couple of days and in between my course reading I’ve been trying to sneak in some time to revisit Ed Brubaker’s Catwoman again, a series I really enjoyed several years ago (for the revolutionary effect it had on Selina as a character once more and for the fact that it drips style at every turn). I just finished Selina’s Big Score and hope to work my way through he first couple of dozen issues over the next few weeks. I didn’t forget how good these comics were, but they’re definitely that much better than I remember.
