The Virtues of Wanderhome

kolos42 @ 2004-06-09T07:56:00

2004-06-09T12:56:43Z

Let's talk comics.

2004 is the year of the return of the maxi-mini-crossover....screw it.

What was big in the 1980's has reared its head again in 2004. Namely in two comic "events" respectfully known as Secret War and Identity Crisis.

Now if you were around in the 1980's and reading you might have heard of these two successful maxi-series, albeit under a different name. Let's start with Secret War.

May 1984 saw the release of Marvel Comic's Secret Wars #1 written by Jim Shooter, penciled by Mike Zeck and edited by Tom DeFalco. Secret Wars was an epic in the field of comics containing a large cast of characters combating a threat to the universe at large. The series premise was rather simple. The Beyonder, a denizen of another universe, decided to pit all (most, to be honest) of Marvel's heroes against the Marvel villains in a winner-take-all competition. I won't ruin the end for you but I wouldn't be too worried.

Two years later a sequel was attempted, the cryptically named Secret Wars II. This time the Beyonder had a mid-life crisis. That's pretty much the extent of the story. Again written by Jim Shooter, this series was penciled by Al Milgrom and edited by Bob Budiansky. (Personally I blame Bob for this travesty and not Jim. But that's personal preference.)

February 4, 2004 was the street date of Secret War. This time the book is written by Brian Michael Bendis and art is provided by Gabriele Dell'Otto. The writing in this update of the series, 20 years after its original incarnation is much tighter and finds the audience left without the mysterious Beyonder and relying solely on the conflict between Nick Fury, Dr. Doom (apparently), and other Marvel heavyweights. The art is fantastic and since painted, can neither be compared no contrasted against Mr. Zeck or Mr. Milgrom.

This year's big "event" from DC is Identity Crisis which according to writer Brad Meltzer, "(is) a murder mystery set in the DC universe." The word "Crisis" for DC is not new. In fact, its a tradition as old as Marvel's Secret Wars.

Twenty years ago DC Comics began it's own maxi-series named Crisis on Infinite Earths. "Crisis", as it has since been known was written by Marv Wolfman and penciled by George Perez. This tale officially ended the DC Silver Age by combining all the alternate universes that had sprung up over the decades into a single cohesive universe.

Crisis on Infinite Earths never had a "sequel" as such, however, in recent years many older stories from DC's Silver Age about heroes jumping from universe to universe was collected in DC's Crisis on Multiple Earths. This work featured a variety of writers and artists from DC's Silver Age.

There has been a contemporary work based on Crisis on Infinite Earths which takes place between issues three, four and five of the now classic series. This was entitled Legends of the DC Universe: Crisis on Infinite Earths, The Untold Story. Scripted by Marv Wolfman this may be a great tale, as Mr. Wolfman was the writer of the original work, alas I had not heard of the book until doing research for this story and have not had the time or opportunity to read it.

All of this has lead me to a singular conclusion. Like the best movies, or most popular, the best comics are now rapidly approaching their "remake". In fact, the first issue of Secret War is already in print. Let us consider the similarities of the two to their earlier counterparts. Secret War tells the tale of a "secret war" that will never be revealed to the public like its forefather, Secret Wars. Identity Crisis is being billed as a huge event in which not all of the characters will make it out alive. Sadly, this bears resemblance to the inhabitants of Earth-blah, blah, blah in Crisis on Infinite Earths. Both are being published during the twentieth anniversary of the original series, although no note is made of that fact in press for either series. Again Marvel has beaten it's competitor to the stands with Secret War. Secret Wars is widely believed to have been an "answer" to DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths that was rushed and failed to contain the substance of DC's work. Whether the same is true for these new tales remains to be seen.

All in all, one can only hope that these two new pieces, who twenty years later are produced by who are still the industries biggest publishers, prove to be as ground breaking as at least one of the originals was and as fantastical as the other. When the dust settles, I hope to find a renewed comic industry with all the hope and dreams it had twenty years ago.

Either way, I'd get out there right away and buy them both. They are sure to be excellent examples of the peak of the industry's work and well worth the money. It's your life and you've been warned.

Sex and MMORPG's or "The Odds You've Had A Homosexual Experience Whether You Realize It Or Not"

2004-05-22T22:33:43Z

MMORPG's are elusive creatures that I would venture to say most of the populace don't really understand. There's definitely something ephemeral in the joys that many people claim to take from playing these "online" games. Oft times the reactions of most people is to simply declare a MMORPG gamer a "loser", not unlike the way they probably decided the same about tabletop RPG players when they were in high school. What these non gamers fail to realize is that MMO's contain a very distinct demographic of people who play these games daily escaping real life and oddly, their heterosexual nature. A very large group of MMO players are, in fact, at the very least bisexual. A great many of them may even be playing homosexual "avatars". (That's code for characters in MMO land.)

Let me explain before you cry foul and begin thinking this is some kind of gay bashing endeavor on my part. Nothing could be further from the truth. All told, I'm sure that most of these people believe wholeheartedly that they are playing heterosexual avatars. They, unfortunately for them and fortunately for your amusement are very, VERY wrong.

Let's cover some of MMO history to get the facts before we move on to my controversial conclusions.

Fact One: 84% of Everquest players are male, while only 16% are female.

According to the Norrathian Scrolls: A Study Of Everquest http://www.nickyee.com/eqt/home.html

Fact Two: On average, EQ players have 4.96 (N=1236) characters on their account which are above level 5. There is no significant gender difference. Male players, however, have on average 1.24 (N=918) female characters above level 5, while female players have on average 0.39 (N=157) male characters above level 5. This is significant at the p=.03 level. Male players also have significantly more characters of the opposite gender than female players even when all their characters are counted, regardless of level (T[1196]=4.88, Mmale(1010)=1.25, Mfemale(188)=0.44, p<.001).

Male EQ players who do have female characters report using them on average about 35.3% (N=275) of the time, while female players who do have male characters report using them on average about 14.2% of the time (N=51). This is significant at the p=.003 level.

Also according to the Norrathian Scrolls: A Study Of Everquest http://www.nickyee.com/eqt/home.html

Where am I going with all this technical information you ask? To a very uncomfortable place, if you'd like to tag along.

The final fact of note in this trip to the realms of the soon to be scared homophobic Everquest players is this: The fastest growing profession in all MMORPG's that is unlisted in every last Class or Profession list is prostitution.

That's right, cyber sex has long invaded the shores of the MMORPG. No game is safe and no amount of chat moderation can ever completely eradicate it. However, the disturbing part is that at any given moment in any MMO the primary gender playing female avatars is MALE.

What does this mean? That in any significant sampling of in game prostitutes plying their trade you are invariably more likely to find males playing those avatars than females if all things are equal.

What does that mean? If you've partaken of the cyber sex in an MMORPG there is a good chance that your partner was male, whether you realize it or not.

Right now there a far too many men reading this saying to themselves, "No way, that what was a woman, I'm sure of it."

Are you sure?

Did you see a picture of the actual person? Are you sure it wasn't fake? Did you speak on the phone with them? We'll even go to the outside here. Are you sure they don't have voice masking technology? (Which, by the way, is standard on more than a couple of the free telephony programs available over the Internet.)

Alright, so now I've scared you. There's a chance you've had a homosexual experience. Get over it. I'm going back to talking to the rest of the people reading the article while you climb into bed and sob to yourself about how everything you ever thought you knew about yourself has been shattered. That's okay, if you watch wrestling you should be getting enough vicarious gay action to never act on it in person. SHOULD, that is.

So, for everyone else, what does this mean? Well, now you have a little something you can laugh about at the office when the nerdy little IT guy professes his superiority over you in all things next time your PC breaks down. Just stare at that blue screen of death and imagine how many Wood Elves out there in skimpy leather clothes are actually men and that one of those eight foot tall warriors being friendly with them is probably the guy telling you how sad it is you know nothing about computers. OK, now back to comforting the young men I just scared so horribly.

/deep breath

Look, odds are you're not really gay. You didn't know it was a man and there's no reason to believe it's not...as long as you don't check my references near the top of the page. Better you leave those alone. The simple fact of the matter is you like having sex with pixels and that's okay. Kinda weird, but okay. Maybe next time you run right from your wrestling show as the credits begin to roll to your PC so you can play Everquest, you'll think twice about what you're doing. I mean, let's be honest, theres a chance you may be a senator someday and you don't want to be blackmailed by a 450 lbs. guy named Ariel or Rainbow Sprite. So, to tell the truth, you should be thanking me. I've saved you endless embarrassment and having to explain yourself to your constituents. So you're not gay and it's alright, no one will ever know.

But if you watch wrestling and partake of EQ prostitution, you are bisexual. Sorry.

Either way, it's your life and you've been warned.

Stay tuned for my next entry: Television News, Padding the Statistics for Satan

The Beginning- Everything I Ever Learned I Learned From The X-Men

2004-05-22T05:39:42Z

The first thing is indubitably the last thing you ever want to do...so I suppose we should get "first thing's first" out of the way. In other words the introduction. So here's the facts. I'm a 25 year old brunette male living with a 24 year old, gorgeous redhead. (Can a man be a brunette?) Now, if you've read the title of this entry you're probably well aware of what I'm getting at here. If not, just imagine the perfect couple...wearing blue and yellow spandex. I'm a self professed comics geek and overall probably a bit more defined by my childhood than I should be.

Let's clear that up. I don't mean those lost days of youth between 14 and 19 when you go out with your friends and have your first introductions to beer, sex, cars and inevitably an awkward moment with a man that the two of you resolve to never talk about with anyone ever again... including each other. I'm talking about the eons before that, when summer vacation was a chance to play in the pool with your G.I. Joes and getting up early on Saturdays was required for any self respecting cartoon conniseur. Those innocent times where war was fun, sex was kissing and you thought liquor probably tasted like liquid candy. I've learned in my twenty five years that the first two are truer than you think and if you go to the right bar with umbrellas in the parking lot, the third isn't too far off either.

Now you know a little about me...but not enough to identify me to the police, which is probably where all this is better ended. So onto the subject of today's wisdom. Everything I ever learned I learned from the X-Men.

I suppose it's true, but no more so than saying the same about your father, Saturday morning cartoons or the Penthouse Forum section of your father's magazines. And by the way, those stories really do happen, but they usually end in front of a judge with you in an orange jumpsuit, not in a jacuzzi.

So what did the X-Men teach me, you say? Let's start at the beginning. Friends are all that really matters, if only to have someone to recount your adventures with. Let's be honest, whats the point of being a little boy or a globe-spanning super hero if you don't have someone to share it with? So whether you do it over coffee at Harry's Hideaway or over juice on the playground, you have someone to stand just to the side of you and say, "No shit! It really happened just like that! But he forgot to tell you the part where the island tried to eat us!"

That, honestly, is just the first truth in your otherwise mundane life. Now on to the good stuff.

Redheads are always hotter than any other girl around...especially if there are no other girls around. Think about the number of men over the years that have admitted an attraction to Jean Grey. Cyclops, Angel (Archangel), Beast, Iceman, Professor Xavier, Logan (Wolverine) and countless others. I first discovered this when I was in second grade and met a cute little redhead that was the object of my innocent affections for the next, well, commercial break, at least. There was also Daphne on Scooby Doo re-runs which may have affected me to an unknown extent. As I say this I have a taste for a dog treat, so that may give you an inkling. Now all this is, according to my amazing lack of a single P.h.D. and the fact that I sleep with a gorgeous redhead on a daily basis. It's ok, my girlfriend knows about her. She's not thrilled, but she'll shift personalities in another thirty seconds and be ok with it again. (I must say, the joys of dating a MPD are outstanding. I bet you're wondering if I'm making a joke. The truth is, if you live with a woman, you know I am...and I'm not.)

Lesson three, the cool guy is NEVER clean shaven. Let's examine the evidence. Wolverine absolutely never, under any circumstances, is clean shaven. Exhibit two, Gambit. I don't think anyone has made more of a career out of cajun slang and a five o' clock shadow than Remy Lebeau. So I like to shave with a set of hair clippers. Never fails to give you that well groomed, ungroomed look.

The next lesson, don't ever be your own guinea pig. Case in point, Henry McCoy. Also known as the Beast. Let's be honest, before he decided to save the secrets of his mutation formula by drinking it, he was just a guy with REALLY big hands and feet. Which, of course, never fails to work with the ladies. Or so my size thirteens would like to think. Afterwards Hank was relegated to blaming the clogs in the vacuum on the nearest cat. Honestly, how does anyone but Sisqo expect to get a woman with blue hair. (That was for me. I love the idea of all of you wandering around singing the "Thong" song to yourself all day and hating me.)

This leads us directly into the next lesson of choice. The bad ass never gets the girl, at least not in the long run. We've all come to understand this over the course of our lives. As our leather jackets make their way farther back into our closets we find ourselves in longer relationships. Maybe it's because we're not the jackasses we once were. I like to think its because we realized wearing an entire cow can get really uncomfortable in July. Think about it, have any of you ever seen a happy cow in July? So, back to the point in less than ten sentences, who was really shocked when Jean Grey decided to marry the "nice guy", Scott Summers. (That's Cyclops for you non geeks, but then you probably gave up when I used the word "indubitably ".) Poor Wolverine with his bad ass leather jacket didn't even put on a suit and attend the ceremony, he hid back in the trees and left behind a letter. Mind you, this is not to say that the cool guy never gets the girl, but rather the bad ass. Replace "cool guy" with "homosexual" and "bad ass" with "homophobe" and you're not too far off from a good joke. But I'll be covering the budding homosexuality of some 21st century men in my next entry. Don't worry, it won't offend anyone, but it may scare some of you a little.

The artist always makes a martyr of themselves. How universally true this is. Whether you're Colossus dying to save the rest of the mutants of the world or a twenty something sculptor who is "tortured" by their deep emotions and lack of a good counselor, or a dietician for that matter. Ramen really deserves a plug at every artist's first gallery showing. You never hear of the mechanic who has such troubling issues that they have to spend nights in a dark room with music playing in the background by a woman that refuses to shave her legs for this environmental thing or another. It's always the waifish little fellow who sleeps with women taking philosophy courses and has the number for his pot dealer taped to his fridge. Not that mechanics don't have pot dealers...but they're usually sane enough to dial the number with the light on and not running their fingers over it while sobbing in the hope that it will suddenly turn to brail and people will one day see your genius for what it really is...a great thing to fill up that gaping hole of white paint over the mantle of their fireplace. (Sorry, that came from a special place in my brain...)

Today's final lesson? Don't ever, ever, ever let your baby be sent into the future to come back to you as a creation owned by a pissy little jeans model who thinks he can draw named Liefeld who'd be better off taking a few anatomy courses than holding onto whatever former glory they might have had from a career that didn't really pan out. What is this all about you ask? I'm getting there. Your dreams are yours, don't ever sell them out to the future and don't EVER forget that if it's your baby, then you're the only one that can steer it's life properly into the future. This is the penultimate lesson I learned from the X-Men. Your life is yours and what you do with it may garner great fame, infamy, both or niether. But no matter what it was your life and YOU lived it. So get off your ass and go have a day worth living, or at least one worth remembering on the playground with all your buddies, or maybe tucked in a booth at that mythical little place called Harry's Hideaway.

Either way, it's your life and you've been warned.

Come back for the next entry: Sex and MMORPG's or "The Odds You've Had A Homosexual Experience Whether You Realize It Or Not"