Mike Allred, superstar artist from Madman, X-Statix, the Atomics, iZombie, and about a hundred other great books is back at Marvel with Daredevil #17, written by Mark Waid.

Mike Allred is one of my favorite artists, his stuff is so clean and fun, but his sequentials can be incredibly dynamic and full of punch. His work on X-Force/X-Statix was some of my favorite comics storytelling ever and I’m glad to see him on this run of Daredevil.

“It’s the issue Mike Allred was born to draw” – Marvel Senior Editor, Stephen Wacker

Prepare for non-stop action as not one, not two, but THREE, Eisner Award winning creators present your first look at Daredevil #17! Courtesy of Mark Waid and special guest artist Michael Allred & colorist Laura Allred, this pulse-pounding adventure pits the Man Without Fear against an old foe…Stilt-Man! Can Daredevil make it out of this grudge match in one piece? Find out in Daredevil #17, hitting comic shops everywhere, the Marvel Comics app, and Marvel Digital Comic Shop this August.

DAREDEVIL #17 (JUN120656)
Written by MARK WAID
Pencils and Cover by MICHAEL ALLRED
Colors by LAURA ALLRED
On Sale – 8/15/2012

This first appeared on The Huffington Post.

The Comedian, created by Alan Moore and played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan in the film adaptation, is one of the most unhinged and disturbing superheros to come out of The Watchmen mythos. He almost makes Rorschach look sane.

With the Before Watchmen series, DC Comics is giving us a look at the events before the seminal graphic novel from the characters we were all clamoring to read more about, even though Alan Moore had no more stories to tell. Or, perhaps, he did, and just didn’t want to end his feud with DC Comics. I’m sure I’ll never know for sure.

To bring to life the backstory of The Comedian, DC Comics turned to writer Brian Azzarello and illustrator JG Jones. Azzarello is best known for his gritty, over the top crime comics (most notably 100 Bullets) and seemed a perfect fit to give someone as unbalanced as The Comedian a back story.

Here you are, without further ado, two covers and three pages of the comic that explores the Comedian’s time in Vietnam. It hits comic book stands on Wednesday, July 25, 2012.

Bryan Young is the editor of the geek news site Big Shiny Robot! and an author, most recently of the critically acclaimed science fiction adventure, Operation: Montauk.

I had a look at three comics from Image coming out tomorrow. The first and probably my favorite of the three is:

Chew: Secret Agent Poyo (One-Shot)

Chew is a series I’ve been wanting to start but haven’t gotten around to yet. I hear it’s an amazing title but I’ve got a long ways to catch up. But I saw there was a one shot starring a badass rooster so I thought I’d give it a try. This is a fantastic read, very funny, and exactly what you should expect from a book about a total badass homicidal rooster.

Price: $3.50

Hoax Hunters #1

A reality TV show in a comic book. This book follows a crew that go out and try to disprove hoaxes and tall tales. Of course they have a hidden agenda, because secretly they actually know a lot of those hoaxes are true, they’re just trying to settle problems among the communities of monsters and make sure that other would be hunters don’t come upon the living legends. The story starts when some weird things start to go down in the swamps of Louisiana. The crew has to find out what’s going on while filming their own show on why there isn’t anything going on. This book is being done by a lot of the same people involved with the next title Revival.

Price: $2.99

Revival #1

The cover of this title worried me but once I got into the story I really liked it. This one is about a small town where everyone who was once dead is now coming back to life. But for some reason it’s only happening within some radius and so the government has basically quarantined the area so no one can get in or out. People in the area still have to live their lives, yet now some of their dead loved ones have now come back to life. Keeping it to one location is a good move as we can get to know the characters and not have to worry to much about what is happening outside of the town. The book also has a good amount of action in it and a hell of a lot of religious allusions. Could you imagine the religious fervor that would occur if the dead were coming back to life? Well this book imagines it and puts it to print. The story comes to us from Tim Seeley who has been working on Hack/Slash.

Price: $2.99

If you were lucky enough to grab some of the preview tickets for their major launches, the folks at Capcom gladly treated you to pre-play experiences. After the battle of the line we were lucky enough to dive in, believe it or not, the Devil May Cry origin is good, and is not a bastardization of something I really loved. Through the limited information given it isn’t a remake of DMC 1, it is Dante discovering who he is. The combat system hasn’t developed much from DMC 3 and DMC 4, except they added a reach system. Similar to utilizing Nero’s glove in DMC 4, Dante can use his chain whip to pull himself closer to the enemy, or pull them closer to him.

He is also given an air dash to navigate levels quickly and efficiently. I was glad to see that the cockiness of Dante wasn’t taken away with the origin. For example (please cover your children’s eyes). In the demo boss battle against the giant slurm alien, (yes the one story element that I found ridiculous, it’s comparable to Futurama’s Slurm episode.) Anywho, that aside as you beginning battling the Slurm producing alien, she begins telling you to fuck off, to which you reply, “no you fuck off”, she then gets angry and says, “fuck you” and of course you reply because the last one to speak wins right? It was not the highest point of writing I’ve experienced but it kept the cocky and youthful feel to Dante, even with the new hair color.

I really think that if Capcom can keep their balance of difficulty to combat well put together the game will receive a warm reception. The pre-play definitely made me excited.

Based on what I’ve seen so far, they got it right. They got it very, very right. Sadly, only Gearbox employees were allowed to play as the Aliens at the Colonial Marines set-up, but I did get a chance to play as a marine alongside five other E3 attendees. First let me say that the atmosphere of the level we were playing was Aliens to the core. The atmosphere, the tech, the structures, it all fit perfectly into the Aliens universe.

There were four loadout options (severely limited for demo purposes), two assault-rifle based and two shotgun-based, and every weapon felt exactly as it should. There were a few different Alien types swarming over us and the Xenomorphs could climb up walls and along ceilings like in previous games. The smallest Xenos felt like the perfect mix of easy to kill but impossible to hit; lose track of one of these guys there’s no telling where they’ll be in half a second. The mediums were a little slower and a little tougher. The heavies were sporting big, armored skulls and took a lot of punishment before going down. A lone marine will always get wrecked, but if the marines can manage to stick together and work as a squad they have a solid fighting chance. When your teammates turn and start firing directly behind you, it is a legitimately scary experience. You spin around, knowing what you’re going to find, hoping, praying that you’ll have time to get a shotgun round off—but you don’t. And the Xenos tear you to pieces.

The final product, on top of the excellent multiplayer mode we got a chance to play, will also feature a full campaign with drop-in / drop-out co-op up to four players. Your friends can jump in whenever they happen to be around, a great move by Gearbox. I think the makers of Borderlands know a little something about getting co-op right, so you can count on a quality experience there. Aliens: Colonial Marines is set to release Feb 12, 2013 on PC, PS3, X360, and WiiU.

[Connor Cleary is an author, video game columnist and critic, and a freelance web-slash-graphic designer. He is a reviewer at GameShark and an occasional opinion and analysis columnist at Gamasutra. His freelance design business is Four Stair Multimedia and Design. You can follow Connor @The_Blue_Key, or at fb/TheBlueKey, or check out his writing archive on tumblr, The Blue Key.]

Some of the games I got my hands on at E3 are worth mentioning, but don’t necessarily warrant an entire article by themselves—or I just didn’t have time to get too in depth with them. Instead, here’s a brief run-down of a few rapid, drive-by gaming experiences from my E3 trip this year, these might be games you haven’t heard quite as much about yet because they’re hardly at the forefront of the E3 media blitz.

Keep reading for first impressions with:

• Metal Gear Solid HD Collection
• Twisted Metal 2
• Coolboarders 2
• Final Fantasy VII
• Zone of the Enders HD Collection
• Ni no Kuni
• Hitman: Absolution
• and PlayStation Battle All-Stars

Let’s start with a look at a couple of the “PSOne Classics” the PS Vita supports, because for my money that’s one of the most enticing things about the Vita. The PSP was supposed to be the portable PSOne of our dreams, but its awkward control scheme made most games a chore to play. Sorry to say it, but even with a significantly improved control scheme the Vita doesn’t solve this problem for most titles.

That backside touch-pad is particularly problematic; it severely limits your options for holding the Vita comfortably. If you have big hands you’re going to have to wring them up into a pretty uncomfortable position in order to maintain leverage on the front-side controls without accidentally triggering the backside pad, that could become a problem for any kind of extended Vita play session.

Twisted Metal 2, PS Vita “PSOne Classics”

This was an extraordinarily disappointing experience. Twisted Metal 2 was one of my favorite games back in the day, so I was excited to see how it played. Obviously the game is showing its age, but the real reason it was such a letdown was how it handled: like crap. Using the back-side touch-pad as a replacement for L2/R2 buttons wasn’t a good move. It feels incredibly awkward, and launching weapons involves adjusting your grip on the device which will probably throw off your aim.

Coolboarders 2, PS Vita “PSOne Classics”

Another disappointing port here, for most of the same reasons as Twisted Metal 2 above. The controls are a pain to get a hang of, the touch-pad as L2/R2 is a pain in the backside. (Sorry for the pun, it was begging to be made.) Playing these ports, you get the feeling that the Vita just isn’t the system you’re looking for if you’re looking to play any actiony games that require quick, precise controls. However… read on.

Final Fantasy VII, PS Vita “PSOne Classics”

To the surprise of precisely nobody, FF7 is on the Vita. And seeing as there are no twitch-reflex moments, the Vita works perfectly for this one. There’s probably not much that needs to be said here, it’s another high-fidelity FF7 port that looks lovely and plays exactly as you remember it.

(Note for those wondering about PSP titles like Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions: The Vita offers PSP game support through software emulation. But if you bought a physical, UMD copy of a game then you’re out of luck. You’ll have to repurchase a digital copy through the PlayStation Store.)

Metal Gear Solid HD Collection, PS Vita

Even though the Vita didn’t seem to handle the actiony PSOne ports very well, the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection feels surprisingly good. Probably because Konami specifically remapped the controls to the Vita, as opposed to the PSOne ports that seem to just slap the game onto the Vita and hope the controls work out.

In fact, this might just be the game that finally makes me shell out for a PS Vita. You’ve got Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater in the same package here with a $40 price tag. They both look crisp and gorgeous on the Vita’s nice big screen. Controls feel natural and easy to get the hang of—well, mostly: some of the controls have been updated “to take full advantage of the Vita’s touch-screen capabilities,” so that might take some getting used to. It’s a shame they couldn’t sneak the original Metal Gear Solid on here, but it’s still a solid addition to the Vita library.

Zone of the Enders HD Collection, PS3 / X360

Lightning-quick flying-robot battles are back, baby. If you played the originals you probably remember them fondly, and this collection brings both the original Zone of the Enders and, according to the product descriptions “a never-before-released-in-the-US version of Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner.” They’re excellent ports. Responsive, crisp, beautiful, and just as fun as you remember. The nostalgia factor will probably drive most of the sales here, but at the same time there aren’t too many games that offer this kind of experience. Many mecha-based games do well in making you feel like you’re piloting a gigantic, heavy machine, but ZoE takes the opposite approach by putting you in highly advanced, quick moving and rapid firing bots. The collection release is set for December 12th of this year for $40. Since you’ll only have nine days to play the ZoE collection before the world ends, you might want to consider pre-ordering. /snark

Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, PS3

This game looks beautiful visually—because the visuals were designed with Studio Ghibli (Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, et al)—but the gameplay feels a little stale. If you’re still a diehard fan of JRPGs this is one you’ll want to keep an eye on. It boasts a mix of turn-based and real-time combat utilizing little Pokemon-like creatures and their various skills. The story revolves around a boy who gets transported to another, fantastical world and has to fight to save his parents and the world. The story sounds Ghibli-esque, but unfortunately they weren’t involved with any of the writing. This is probably going to be a great game for a younger audience, so parents of young RPG-fans take note.

Hitman: Absolution, PC / PS3 / X360

Putting this one on the show floor may have been a bit premature, the available build was still pre-beta and the lack of polish was apparent, especially in the controls and cover mechanics. Besides those issues (which will more than likely be resolved in the coming months), the game looks really nice, there are a ton of actors on screen at any moment, the lighting and atmosphere are technically impressive. The voice-over work is a bit overdone, but if you’re a gamer you’ve most likely developed some level of callous against not-so-great voice work anyway. As you’d expect from a Hitman game, there are a variety of ways to take care of a target. In the demo you can snipe him from a window, you can blow up his car, or you can disguise yourself as a chef and poison his food. Absolution shows promise, but it’s a little early to tell how good the final product will be based on the pre-beta build.

PlayStation Battle All-Stars, PS3

Also known snarkily as Super Smash Bros. Sony. And yes, that’s exactly what it is. As of E3 2012, the character list includes: Fat Princess, Parappa, Sly Cooper, Sweet Tooth (Twisted Metal), Kratos (God of War), Nathan Drake (Uncharted), Big Daddy (BioShock), and Colonel Radec (Killzone). It is a lot of fun but it’s also nothing new. This is going to be a fun party game, but it definitely feels like, in trying to rip of Super Smash Bros., the developers of PlayStation Battle missed something really essential and hard to pinpoint about their source material and the result is just lacking somehow. For me, if you put me in a room with three friends and a choice between Smash Bros. and PlayStation Battle I’m still going to pick Smash Bros. every time.

[That’s all for now, folks. Keep an eye out, I’ve got more in-depth looks at a few other games from E3 just around the corner. Was there anything at E3 this year that excited you? Maybe something that flew under a lot of people’s radar? Let us know.]

[Connor Cleary is an author, video game columnist and critic, and a freelance web-slash-graphic designer. He is a reviewer at GameShark and an occasional opinion and analysis columnist at Gamasutra. His freelance design business is Four Stair Multimedia and Design. You can follow Connor @The_Blue_Key, or at fb/TheBlueKey, or check out his writing archive on tumblr, The Blue Key.]

The environments shown had multiple levels of play, and the transitions looked as if they were queued in a smiliar manner to Mortal Kombat vs. DC. The transitions were heavy hitting and went both directions. For example during the first second fight demo’d (Solomon Grundy vs. Batman). Grundy knocked Batman through several buildings on to a roof top a few blocks away. Next Batman sent grundy through several stories of brick and mortar to put them on the ground floor of that same building. For the final transition Grundy was able to throw the caped crusader through 5 or 6 buildings until he landed in the original starting zone. I wish my befuddled words could accurately describe how impressive this looked. Not too much information was given about the combat system but Nether Realms did promise that it would have their own specific “stamp”.

The super moves from Mortal Kombat also seem to be making an appearance in the game. However, instead of being bone crushing they’re more over-the-top and focused on the power of the heroes. For example, Grundy stuns his opponent with a quick knife slash, power slams them, and then shatters his own tombstone over their head. To the total contrary Superman uppercuts his opponent into space and slams them back to earth.

Thus far the character list is pretty interesting. The demo included Batman, Superman, The Flash, and my favorite Solomon Grundy. The posters throughout the convention center also showed Harley Quinn who I assume will also be available.

My first impressions of the game are extremely positive. As long as they lean more towards the Mortal Kombat side and away from Mortal Kombat vs. DC side this could be a worthy addition to your collection.

Sleeping Dogs is Square Enix and United Front Games’ stab at getting into the GTA style action genre. It’s heavily and unabashedly influenced by Hong Kong films, especially blood opera—think John Woo thing—and feels like a love letter to fans of that genre. (more…)

The Men In Black 3 campaign has been in full swing for a while now and an investigative blogger known as BugEyes has been working on discovering the truth about the Men in Black.

We have a look at him in the upcoming film in the video above.

To catch up on the viral campaign, check out the links below…

The viral campaign has followed the investigative blogger, known solely as BugEyes, as he has worked to uncover the truth behind alien life on earth and the Men in Black Suits who appear to cover it up. In his investigation he discovered mysterious clues linked to futuristic vehicles (http://bit.ly/J16ELp), tattoo parlors (http://bit.ly/JW2msu), and even a cake (http://bit.ly/JTAKD9). Even more surprising, he was able to uncover that Arianna Huffington is in fact an extraterrestrial hiding on Earth (http://huff.to/KJMlC3), which became headline news around the country! All the while he has built a group of 100 thousand loyal followers called “MIBelievers” who have helped him uncover clues by posting on his Facebook page (http://on.fb.me/sQ3I9M) and calling in with shocking tips (http://bit.ly/JmTp7p). Everything he has done so far has led to one defining moment when he received his very own black suit (http://bit.ly/JjHPiS) and became an official member of the Men in Black!

Men in Black 3 hits theatres tomorrow.

I’m very excited for this. Manchester Black was one of my favorite Superman characters back when I was reading his titles regularly.

From the press release:

In SUPERMAN VS. THE ELITE, Superman’s effectiveness as a super hero comes into question when a new group of super powerful crusaders, known as “The Elite,” appear on the scene. As super heroes, the Elite know no bounds, and are more than willing to kill, even on a massive scale, to stop villainy — putting them on a collision course with the ever-ethical, yet preferably non-lethal Man of Steel.

The all-new, PG-13 rated film is scripted by award-winning comics writer Joe Kelly and the story is adapted from his original 2001 DC Comics release, “What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice and the American Way?” The single-issue comic, Action Comics #775, was lauded by Wizard Magazine as the “Greatest Superman Story of All Time,” and ranked the epic tale at No. 21 on its list of the “Top 100 Comics of the last 30 years.”

George Newbern (Father of the Bride) reprises his Justice League animated television role as Superman, and primetime television star Pauley Perrette (NCIS) provides the voice of Lois Lane. Downes steps in as Manchester Black, leader of The Elite. David Kaufman (Justice League: Doom) also reprises his Justice League TV series role as Jimmy Olsen.

The film is directed by Michael Chang (Batman: Brave and the Bold).

Bruce Timm (Batman: Year One) is executive producer, and Alan Burnett (Green Lantern: Emerald Knights) is producer.

You can preorder it on Amazon now.