Book Week: Psy Comm, and interview with the Author [Gamer by Design] [Book Week II]...

My regular readers know, I write about video game design, business, and sometimes the mobile app scene. For Book Week, I decided to read something equally nerdy. That would be the graphic novel Psy-Comm. I have the privilege of knowing the author, Tony Salvaggio. As you’ll see below, he is one of those mad scientist personalities. He is a member of two bands, an author, a video game artist, and if there is any time left, I’m sure he eats and sleeps like the rest of us. So its been one of my blogging goals to score an interview. As for Psy-Comm, this thing is a 188 page graphic novel. But it moves really fast. I think I read the whole thing in about 1.5 hours. Part of that is the quick plot movement, but part of it is that it’s drawn in a very cinematic style. The frames are large and action oriented, with some pages only having about one sentence of text. The experience is more like watching a movie sometimes. Here’s my quick summary, without spoilers. The Psy-Comms are a group of psychic troopers, who each have really unique powers. I’d say it’s like the Matrix meets Harry Potter meets X-Men. But there is an interesting socio-political commentary, in which war is entertainment, and the media is woven into the whole battlefield environment. Somehow, with all this grand fare, the book also has a really tight interpersonal story that deals with young people coping with the loss of their loved ones in wartime. I’m honestly very surprised this isn’t a movie.  I’d see it. To be honest, I’m not a big graphic novel fan, but this one grabbed me. So here we go, the interview with author Tony Salvaggio: Matt: Psy-Comm could...

The (Not So) Amazing Spiderman [Tall Drink of Nerd]

So you went and saw The Amazing Spider-Man to witness Andrew and Emma fall in love. Sweet. A lot of critics, comic geek bloggers and my FB friends have been praising The Amazing Spider-Man, mostly for the relationship between Gwen and Peter. I whole heartedly disagree with all of you. There were about a gazillion critical story errors and the script was dull as clipping dry toenails. My one sentence review is: “I’m assuming it’s better than Battleship.” Reading positive reviews has me ranting at my computer screen, wanting to respond with all the reasons the film failed, when it occurs to me: I have a bi-weekly online column. I hardly ever post anything controversial or offensive, and I am inspired by this genius Promethius review, so I figured it was about time to express a contrary opinion (sorry to butt into your space On The Contrary). So here are the reasons The Ambianzing Spiderman super disappointed me and the people who saw the movie with me. I do address that relationship thing in my final point below. (yes I know it’s Spider-Man, but out of disrespect I’ve been calling him Spiderman in one quick blurt. Take THAT mysterious corporate movie production overlords!) WARNING: There are spoilers out the wahzoo in this piece. Plot Problems Once Dennis Leary makes Peter Parker realize Spiderman is just a vigilante (by chasing guys who look like his Uncle’s killer) they just DROP the whole “Who killed Uncle Ben?” thing. Did the writer/director think “Ok, well we’ve used that plot point to get us to here. We don’t really need to tie that storyline up do we? Nah…” How did Peter Parker get the “super tensile spider web” vials from Oscorp? Isn’t that stuff worth a ton of...

Jersey Joe’s Year Two Round Up [Kicking Back with Jersey Joe] May25

Jersey Joe’s Year Two Round Up [Kicking Back with Jersey Joe]

It’s Memorial Day weekend and not only does this mark the unofficial start of summer, it also marks my third SEASON PREMIERE! This blogumn officially kicks off my third year on F & N. Since we’re 93 blogumns in (plus 5 filling in for Ryan Dixon’s Fierce Anticipation), it’s time to update some of the great things we’ve talked about over the past two years. MOUNTAIN DEWMOCRACY May 7, 2010 [FIERCE ANTICIPATION: THE JERSEY JOE EDITION III] In my third blogumn filling in for Ryan, PepsiCo, the bottlers of Mountain Dew released three test flavors for the summer of 2010, allowing fans to vote on which they liked best to join the line permanently. They had tried this experiment in 2008 and it was a huge success. Mountain Dew White Out was the winner and went on sale on October 4th and is still on sale now.  For a brief time, Wal-Mart Supercenters also sold 2 liter bottles of Mountain Dew: Typhoon, one of the losing flavors.  In addition Mountain Dew: Game Fuel Cherry Citrus and Mountain Dew: Game Fuel Tropical were also on sale last summer to tie into the video game release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.  They were discontinued in December. PepsiCo has hinted that it has no plans to test more flavors, but a few new releases have gone on sale.  Mountain Dew Xtreme (grape flavored) in available in Saudi Arabia and Mountain Dew Grape is currently on sale in Japan. For summer 2012, a new flavor will appear in stores: Mountain Dew: Dark Berry as a promotion for the movie The Dark Night Rises.  It will have a mixed berry flavor and the cans will change color when chilled.  It goes on sale June 18th. THE SMURFS MOVIE May...

Avengers Throwback – The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction [Game On]...

I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen The Avengers four times so far and I’ve zero reservation about going for a 5th.  However, one thing I did notice amidst heading out to the theater over and over to see one of my favorite super hero teams is that Hulk seems to just about steal the show every time I venture out.  Now, historically I’ve never been a big Hulk fan.  I don’t have anything against Dr. Banner, I was just always more of an Iron Man/Spider-Man guy. That being said, I loved Hulk in Avengers and it got me thinking about my history with the character and I remembered playing Sierra’s The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. Launched in 2005 on the original Xbox, Playstation 2, and Gamecube, it was a (semi) free-roaming Hulk game that gave you complete freedom to level entire city blocks if you wanted to amidst the regular story missions and a variety of side missions.  I played this game through to completion and highly recommend it based on just how masterfully they captured the essence of stepping into the over-sized purple shorts. The story revolves around Banner, living in seclusion once more in a  small desert town trying to find a cure to stop his Hulk transformations.  While working in exile, he’s invited by Doc Samson to his hideout where they can build a machine together with the possibility of a cure.  Banner, naturally refuses on account of his not wanting to endanger anyone in the vicinity.  This lasts until mutant-bigot Emil Blonsky and Hulk’s classic foe, Thunderbolt Ross show up and throw a wrench in everything, forcing Bruce to transform, wreck everything around him, and allow the story to continue. Tons of Hulk’s signature moves from thunderclaps to flying...

The Orphan Blockbuster: How We Stopped Caring and Learned to Love Unlovable Movies [The Ryan Dixon Line]...

Soda is delicious. But to the ancient Callatians, so was the flesh of dead relatives and nowadays no one outside of gourmand serial killers would salivate over a dish of foie gras d’ humain.  That soda and junk food have followed in the footsteps of flesh and cigarettes to become the consumptive Voldemorts of the 21st century presents a great challenge for corporate confectionerians: How to produce products with addictive deliciousness without fattening the populace into lumbering Elephant Men. PepsiCo’s quest of attaining this snacktopia was chronicled recently in a fascinating New Yorker article written by John Seabrook. In the article, Pepsi’s strategies for creating healthier food — developing a brand new type of salt with the atomic-age name “15 Micron Salt” and building a “taste testing” robot hardwired with cultured cells featuring the genetic sequences of the four known taste receptors — seemed more like excerpts from a science-fiction novel than the evolutionary next step for Cool Ranch Doritos. Instead of spending hundreds of millions dollars on cutting-edge scientific research, all the folks at Pepsi really needed to do was look west toward Los Angeles. During the past fifteen years the marketing, distribution, and accounting departments inside Hollywood studios– the real imaginative forces of the dream machine—have discovered a can’t-miss business algorithm: making movies that no one likes but everyone goes to see. Or, to be more precise, the Orphan Blockbuster. Like the pod people in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the Hollywood hive mind has now confused audiences to the point where they can’t tell good from bad.  Let’s look at two recent releases, both on their way to making more money than the GDP of Guinea-Bissau: Fast Five and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. Both films may be built with...