This was in their FAQ, and I thought it was really clever. Your order is printed on one of the pages in the sticker booklet so that the printer can know what to do with it. But instead of having a bunch of boring text and a barcode and junk they have opted instead for a sticker system. They print an extra page of stickers (each page is 6) and so the first one will be a type of animal, this will tell them what color to make the booklet. Next will be some sort of object, that will tell them where to mail it and so on and so forth. It's like pictograms used in buisness. Very cool to me.
So I should have my set in about 9 more days and I'll post again about the final product. I'm sure I'll recommend it some more.
Now then. On to the nerdiest post I have made yet. I think I've been holding back.
1. One of the most exciting comic book days for me in a long time. Sometimes you buy so many comics that you get behind on certain storylines (Grant Morrison's Batman run for me, at the moment). So you fall behind and then another issue comes out. So you have 2 sitting there. Anyways, I am about 5 behind. But nothing in this stack will be unread by tomorrow morning. It's almost every one of my favorites.
a. Local #10. This series is almost over I believe and every issue is just perfect.
b. Hellboy: Darkness Calls #5 of 6. In my mind there is no way you can go wrong with Mike Mignola's writing. He also does the covers so that helps. This HB series has a new artist named Duncan Fegredo. At first I wasn't excited about this. I love Mignola's work. Guy Davis (The Artist of Hellboy spin-off BPRD) grew on me in one issue. He is amazing. I was worried about this Duncan character. But I shouldn't have been. He takes a lot of Mignola (shadow heavy with lots of "irrev. lines") a splash of Guy Davis (Looser linework and lots of character in faces) and a bit of what I assume is his own style as well (all around goodness). He is like a stew of the greatest things in Hellboy. He is a welcome addition.
c. The Walking Dead #41. The Walking Dead is a comic that is normally late. Not anyones fault and it always delievers some great zombie action, but still. It comes out once every 6 weeks or so most of the time. Well, issue #41 is like the 3rd one in 4 weeks. That's awesome. We're getting spoiled by this. Zombies are at the gate of the jail. Someone will probably die.
d. American Virgin #18. This is just a nicely drawn book with an interesting premise. I always like reading it.
e. Ex Machina: Masquerade Special. 2 days ago, before I knew what was coming out this week, I felt like it had been over a month without an issue of Ex Machina. Maybe even 2 months. It seemed like it has disappeared. Y was still coming out, so I knew that BKV hadn't fallen off of the earth but I was worried. This issue supposedly explains why there are no superheroes (ie. the Great Machine) allowed in NY in the present day-ish story line. Should be interesting.
f. Brit #1. Robert Kirkman (Invincible, Walking Dead) has written a bunch of Image superhero books. The cool thing about them all is that unknown to you at first, and only very minorly touched on through similar locations/characters, they all take place in the same universe. I don't know if you could call it the Kirkmanverse because I'm not sure what the Superpatriot does when he isn't in Invincible. But anyways, Brit is one of those characters. He originally starred in his own mini series which I don't think did too hot. Then he wasin a few issues of Invincible. Now he has his own series which will probably do great due to Invincible.
g. The Mouse Templar #1. This is the real reason for my excitement this week. When MouseGuard was first published, I was told I should check it out. I flipped through it and I wasn't really in to the style of the artwork and I had never heard of the writer. (The comic sold out instantly and went on to be one of them expensive 1st printings. Oh well). The basic premise of MouseGuard is Mice with swords and armor and grand adventures. Like Redwall but with drawings. In the end, I really enjoyed MouseGuard and am buying the new Winter series right now and really liking it. Anyways. This isn't MouseGuard. This is Michael Avon Oeming's dream project. As far as I know (I have looked at his work before but never bought any) Oeming has been talking about Mice Templar for years. It's here and it's amazing looking. This is a new style of drawing for him and it is so Mignola-esque that I couldn't help but buy it on looks alone. Plus it seems to be a double-sized issue. That's a good value.
It took me a second, but here is a great example.
2. Puzzle Fighter HD is finally here on XBOX Live. This is how they shorten the title for their menus at least. It is actually titled "Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix". This of course is a gag on the long winded Street Fighter 2 titles of the 90s. My history with this game is as follows.
A really long time ago I did not have a Playstation. This was in the early days of its life. We finally got one when Final Fantasy VII was released and picked up Vandal Hearts as well. At this time in my life (and still a bit now) I was completely enthralled by the Capcom/Street Fighter Universe. I think it was similar to the Robert Kirkman thing and the Dark Tower and things like this where everything is unreleated at first glance but actually tied together somehow, even if it is loose.
So you have your Street Fighter games, you have your Dark Stalkers games, you have your Cyberbots. These were the main fighting games of Capcom at the time. Then they go and make an amazing puzzle game with characters from all 3 series. Later they would follow on this success with Gem Fighters and even taking the idea to major extremes with Marvel Vs. Capcom 1/2/etc. Self Referental things are for me.
Anyways, I rented this game from Blockbuster back when the store was worth a damn. I played through it lots. Then there was awhile when I didn't have it. Lets call this the dark ages. I then found it in Best Buy on sale and knowing that I loved it and that it was so unknown that it would be out of print soon, I had to ask to buy it. It was OK'd and I rejoiced. This game along with Final Fantasy Tactics was the reason I never did anything with peers in High School. If you could track the hours that Eric Peterson, Mike Love, Gabe Fowlkes, Matt and I logged into this game, I'm sure it would suprise you. We seriously played it a lot.
A side note: A neighbor later bought a Playstation and asked to borrow cool games. I lent him this and he lost the instructions. I love Capcom art so this really depressed me.
When it came time to move to college, I could find a single person that had ever played this game. And once I showed them how, they would try, but my high school years of training were pretty brutal so no one played more then one evening. I even tried this experiment a few months ago with similar results. But now it is on XBOX Live and I have a hard time putting it down. In public matches I was 14-2 before my xbox crashed (wtf!). In ranked I am 5-0. There are a lot of people online that have never played this game (it also came out later for the Sega Saturn and the GBA, so they have no excuse). They hop into games and it's over in under a minute. I had the standard guy who logs in and calls you gay and tries to shock you into hating him but he lost so fast it wasn't even funny.
And his reason for losing, but what he didn't realize, was that he picked Dan of all people. Here's a breif rundown of Dan that I wish I had to look up on Wikipedia but I am infact lame enough to know this. Dan, a Street Fighter character with similar fireballs/hurricane kicks to Ryu/Ken/Akuma was originally introduced as a joke. His backstory and character design along with his tiny fireball attacks were an attempt to make fun of SNK/NeoGeo fighting games (King of Fighters mainly). He is this joke that they kept around for a long time.
In Puzzle Fighter, the object of the game is to put like colored gems together and once you have a large "power gem" you place these circular "crash gems" of the same color onto them and they vanish from your side of the screen. This is like completeing a line in Tetris. The "Fighter' part of Puzzle Fighter tho comes into play when you use the crash gem. Depending on the size of your power gems your opponent will suddenly get a bunch of gems dropped onto his screen. The pattern of the drops (Drop Pattern) is dependant on your character. So Ryu drops columns of the same colors while better characters drop seemingly random bunches of mess.
Anyways, Dan being the joke that he is has a drop pattern of all red gems. So no matter what you do with him your opponent will have tons of red all over his screen. This is nice because you end up with massive red power gems that you crash and kill dan easily. A good Dan player uses one of two strategies neither of which is guaranteed to win: You either bombard them with so much red that it clogs their screen and they lose, or you don't destroy much and amass power gems of your own to unleash all at once in a massive chain combo. Dan vs. Dan matches are a lot of fun.
Long story short, this game is a lot of fun and had it not been for the lag I had and the 2 crashes while playing, I would have attempted to take the current #1 leaderboard position (40-1) through the night. That's ok tho. I did some nice achievements like finishing the game on Hard with Dan (took a lot of tries), finishing the game without losing, etc.
They have added all the Saturn modes (Y - match 3 colors and they vanish, like puyo pop; and Z - rotate 4 gems at once to clear portions of the screen, like tetris attack/puzzle league/warios woods/etc) and also a new X' mode which has rebalanced characters (much needed as high level play was always between Ken and Donovan. Now more people stand a chance). I love this game. I think you should play it if you really just read that long ass post.
I could write another 10 paragraphs about this game but I'd rather go play it or read comic books.
3. I am headed to NYC Friday morning. I will be attending a free Battle concert. I will be seeing SuperBad again (first time paying for it tho). I will hopefully run into my High School hero and friend (and recent Drawn front page link) Kymia Nawabi. I will hopefully see my "sister" Leah. I will hopefully see Clay. It should be a lot of fun.
4. I grind my teeth when I type these things. Ouch.
5. My evening, post toothbrushing but presleeping, brown belt sudoku has been replaced with Picross DS. I love Picross and Nintendo has finally seen fit to release an american version of the game. The last Picross game they brought over to the US was Mario's Picross on the original white-brick Gameboy. That was 12 years ago. And it was one of those rare sleeper hits like puzzle fighter. I have finished about 70 of the 15x15 grids and they just started giving me 20x20. These are getting tough but it's so fun. I need to break out my graph paper again and make some more of my own. I have a self portrait one I made but haven't broght over to the digital realm yet. And a couple PFS ones as well.
6. In the new Print magazine they have this article about a new Nickelodeon kid's show called "Yo Gabba Gabba". It has Mark Mothersbaugh from Devo and what appear to be giant kid's version of the Wonder Showzen puppets. It looks really strange and great. I saw an episode on at lunch the other day (according to TiVO) but when i flipped to it it was actually...something else. I don't remember what. Spongebob probably. I bring this up only because kids shows are sometimes reallly strange/interesting (ie. Lazy Town!) and this looks like another one of those. I'll bet it's cool.
7. While in Aurora, Brantley gave me some really interesting ideas for the superhero comic threads that are building in my mind. My memory being what it is tho, I can't recall them. I'll have to have another round table discussion with him over Frank's pizza's cheese steak.
8. I think that'll be it. This was long and I am going to check the TiVO and read about mice with swords.