Day 2 of Comic-Con started off with 3 big panels in Hall H. First up was Big Bang Theory. They started us off with a gag reel. There was the customary Q and A in which we really learned nothing, but fans got to have fun and talk to their favorite celebrities. Later on in the panel they brought an astronaut out to offer actor Simon Helberg, who plays Howard on the show, a trip to outer space. He declined, so they offered it to one of the many people who asked questions in the Q and A. A young lady won it and will now get to fly into space. All in all there wasn’t much learned, but we got a few laughs.

The second panel of the day is the one I looked forward to the most, AMC’s The Walking Dead. Which kicked off with a kick ass trailer for the upcoming third season where we got to see plenty of Michonne, The Governor, the prison, and a returning Michael Rooker as everyone’s favorite racist redneck Merle Dixon! The trailer gave me the chills and I may have wet myself a little bit! The Nerdist, Chris Hardwick, was the moderator for the panel which included Robert Kirkman, Andrew Lincoln, Sarah Callis, Laurie Holden, David Morrisey, Norman Reedus and others.  We then got the same Q and A treatment in which we learn nothing about the upcoming season that we didn’t already know, but got to know the actor’s favorite moments and opinions about their characters. However we did learn that the show’s third season will start on October 14^th, 2012.

-uFA

Lastly for me in Hall H was the Game of Thrones panel. The author of the novels, George R.R. Martin, was the moderator. On the panel were the actors who play  Danyrus, Rob Stark, Catlin Stark, Ygritte, and Theon. I’m not bad mouthing his work, however George Martin seemed to be a very awkward moderator and to me came across as a dirty old man. We got the usual fandom in the Q and A. A recap video of season 2, and a video introducing us to the new members of the cast including the bombshell that Diana Rigg will be playing the Queen of Thorns. To close out the panel we got a date for the series return next year, March 31^st 2013.

The Walking Dead seemed to be the best panel of the day because the rest didn’t really give us much in terms of info or footage for the upcoming season. All in all not much was learned, but I didn’t seem to mind. The pure geekdom and energy from the thousands of people there was amazing.

I then closed out my day by returning to the floor and demoing Marvel Heroes. Marvel Heroes will be a new free to play game that is in the style of Diablo. It will be online, and you’ll get to play with other people. The characters available to me in the Demo were Wolverine, The Hulk, Scarlett Witch, and Iron Man. It seemed like a perfect blend of Diablo and Ultimate Alliance. In the demo level Professor X tasked me with fighting the Purifiers and Sentinels to get to William Styker before Magneto. Well in true comic book fashion of course the villain got there first and I ended up having to save Styker from Magneto in a cool boss fight. There will be a beta soon, and I will report back with more about the game then.

Back in December a couple of friends decided they wanted to dedicate a minecraft server to Game of Thrones. They would get help from a large number of people and over the next 8 months they created some of the world’s greatest cities. This week they decided to release a bunch of the finished cities as pictures online.

Like for instance this photo of Pyke, a place also known as the Iron Islands. If you would like to see all 17 images you can go here:

Minecraft Photos!

Now here’s something even cooler, many know I am a minecraft addict, and so when I saw these photos it wasn’t enough for me, I wanted to see them up close. I did some digging and found that these guys have their server open to the public. If you have minecraft you can enter the website “mc.westeroscraft.com” into a multiplayer server and you too can go exploring through Westeros. My personal favorite place was Harrenhall, the castle which was ravaged by dragons. What is also cool is that this is still a work in progress, some places like The Wall are done, but other places such as Qarth haven’t even been started yet. And as you might imagine, when you have a giant amount of people all working towards a common goal there may be some fun easter eggs too, such as in the town of Lannisport there is a Gong Shop with some funny things inside. For Community fans if you’re lucky you might find deep inside the earth The “Dreamatorium.” And for those who have time and are willing to search they have a really fun treasure hunt. I made it to the sixth clue before stopping for the day. The first clue is located in the building you spawn in.

Minecraft is like playing a giant game of legos with a bunch of friends, and this group decided to play legos to a massive extent. I recommend if you have minecraft you spend some time on their server.

Kickstarter has really been giving some projects a lot of momentum lately, but I’ve never seen anything like this fundraiser for OUYA, an open source console that could change the way we play video games on our televisions forever. The project was fully funded within 24 hours, but contributors didn’t stop anywhere near the original $950,000 goal – last I checked at 9 PM, Pacific Standard time, the total had already surpassed $1,900,000!

The idea to create an open source console may appear to be quite simple on the surface, but with the right planning, functionality and execution this could bring massive changes to the way games are made and distributed. All in all, this could be absolutely brilliant for small developers and indie game creators all over the world.

So, if you’re a gamer, should you support this project? Watch the video and hear some of the details:

I only have a few reservations about this Kickstarter. Once the OUYA is up and running, will there be folks ready and standing by to work on updates/patches/etc. to correct any missing functionality or errors that are discovered post-launch? Games are ever changing and the console will need to be adaptable to keep up with those improvements and alterations. Furthermore, how would they deal with transactions for games that have stuff you can purchase? If they’ve got substantial plans for these potential snags in the future, then I think this console could be pretty damn awesome!

As for the controversy – not only are they supporting international players with completely open region settings, but they’re also letting hackers and mod-ers have free reign with the console… this could definitely get interesting!

So, what do you think? The future of gaming? Highly controversial? Sound off in the comments below!

I stumbled across SuperGNes about two weeks ago, wondering what I would do to utilize the thousands of Super Nintendo Roms that have been hanging out on my hard drive. I had to try this on multiple phones to make sure my theory was true, so I have utilized this on the HTC One X, Sony Xperia Play (the control makes emulating that much better), and the Samsung Galaxy Note.

First of all, I could never think of a reason to purchase an Xperia Play, until I used SuperGNES. The gaming controls meant for the Playstation Classic titles available for the phone, make the emulator perform better than anything I could have imagined. If the XPeria play were a much more powerful phone, I would carry it everywhere knowing that I could break out a game of Super Mario World anytime, anyplace.

The features of SuperGNES that are most impressive is the ability to download roms through the app itself. If you don’t have access to anything you simply search through the menu, download the file, and it is imported instantly into the emulator. If you have pre-existing ROMs on your SD card or in the phone memory it will detect them and give you the option to download the boxart for your files. Every game I tested ran beautifully.

From Turtles In Time to Final Fantasy 3 (6 if you’re a purist), I was murdering my battery life while reliving my child hood gaming habits in no time. This is the only emulator available for SNES on the play store, and I highly recommend you snag it. You can purchase it in the lite or free format or pay a scant $3.99 and show the developers some love. Which games are you planning on reliving?

When it was announced that The Joker was going to be reintroduced into DC’s new 52, I would have probably met that news with a shrug had it not been married to the Scott Snyder/Greg Capullo team. These guys are doing some of the best work in Batman comics today and they’re doing it with gusto.

The Joker is the defining villain of Batman’s, his ultimate arch-enemy, but he’s been largely absent from the pages of Batman.

Scott Snyder:If you think about it, Joker hasn’t had a big starring role in Batman in a long time. When do you think the last one was?

Bryan Young: Jeez. You’d probably have to go back to…  No Man’s Land?

SS: Yeah, that’s right. The death of Sarah Essen. He’s ubiquitous in the popular culture but he hasn’t had a big starring role in Batman proper.

Talking to Scott about his work with the Joker, there’s an unbridled enthusiasm in his voice. It’s an enthusiasm he’s had since before his first comic-book even hit the newsstands. I interviewed Scott way back in early 2010 about the pending release of American Vampire and we ended up spending two hours on the phone after the interview just talking about how much we liked Batman and what we liked about it. He’s one of the few people on Earth I feel like I can actually wear the full force of my Batman knowledge and love on my sleeve with.

But talk to him about the Joker and he lights up even more:

SS: This is my exploration of who the Joker really is. Not literally though. I have no interest in his backstory. In fact, the comedian elements of The Killing Joke are the only thing that keeps it down for me. This is about who he is and what he means to Batman. Writing the Joker is dark. I was writing this morning and my wife came in and I was trying to decide what to lop off a character. He’s just so unhinged and it’s so fun to write.

I asked Scott to talk about which Joker stories influenced the most and was rather surprised by his answer:

SS: The Killing Joke, I read it when it came out, it stunned me. And the Dark Knight Returns, they came out around the same time. The psychological connection between Batman and Joker spoke to me. Another one of my favorite iterations has been the underrated Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker.

I think Joker works best as a demon on Bruce’s shoulder. He’s bringing horrifying things to life for Bruce…

We talked about the specific story, Death of the Family, and what it might mean to the Bat-family as a whole:

SS: First off, this is a standalone story, you won’t need to read any of the other books about this Joker story, but you will see him in the other Bat family books. He has a bone to pick with the entire family and you’ll see him across the others, even Teen Titans, because he’s got his issue with Tim.

Ever since the start of the new 52, DC wanted the Joker to be absent. They wanted to start using other villains. But ever since the Court of Owls, I’ve been thinking about ways to use him. And I told them that I have this Joker story for after that’s just great.

It’s my love letter to the Joker. It’s crazy and twisted. This is about his psychology. He’s there to burn the house down and prove a point.

BY: Joker seems to be the character who leaves the most defining scars on the Bat family that seem permanent. Or mostly permanent. He killed Jason Todd. He crippled Barbara. He killed Sarah Essen, and a whole bunch of other stuff. It’s what he’s known for. Will we see something that definitive affect the Bat family in the aftermath of all this? 

SS: Yes. There will be big, bloody repercussions. He’s going to leave serious scars. That’s not the point of the book, but that’s how the Joker operates. It’s who he is.

More than anything, this conversation with Scott assured me that we’re still in good hands. It’s been a while since I enjoyed reading my Batman comics this much and I’m grateful to Scott for that.

And bloody repercussions? I like the sound of that.

The Joker arrives in Batman #13, which doesn’t hit stands soon enough.

Welcome to another installment of Indie Books!  This week we have Eliza Frye. She contacted me about her new indie comic book that is premiering at San Diego Comic-Con this week and I really fell in love with the look and feel of the whole thing.

I know we usually stick to prose in this column, but I felt this project was too special to pass up.

So, without further ado, here’s Eliza:

Oh, hello!  My name is Eliza Frye and I make comics, graphic novels, sequential arts, and visual narratives, occasionally even all at the same time.  I started this practice four years ago with a short webcomic called “The Lady’s Murder.”  At the time I was studying animation and decided to use a comic as way to visually develop my second-year film; but before the end of the first semester I fell crazy in love with comics and ditched animation by the side of the road.  My webcomic got nominated for an Eisner Award the following year, and I knew I’d finally found my medium.

“The Lady’s Murder” became the opening story of my first book, Regalia, a collection of short stories about love, murder, fathers, daughters, and tigers.  My comics tend to be described with words like visceral, graphic, and spooky, but I like to think of them as love letters. From “The Lady’s Murder,” a mystery told only by the men closest to the victim, to “I Can See Your Underpants,” a musing on peaches and the history of ladies’ undergarments, each story in Regalia spills some sort of messy secret.  (Just not out loud.)

I produced Regalia through a Kickstarter campaign that quite simply took my breath away.  The project got over-funded by 230%, allowing me to upgrade from paperback to hardcover and work exclusively with domestic printers.  I’m truly thrilled with the finished book, and feel that my friend Chris Northrop summed it up best the first time he picked up a copy and immediately said, “this book smells like quality.”

More about Regalia at San Diego Comic-Con: http://elizafrye.com/regalia-sdcc.html

More of my work: http://elizafrye.com/

My current webcomic: http://deathcomic.com/

My former filmmaking partner and former Big Shiny Robot!, Steven Greenstreet (Neotron), came up with this fan cut of a Dark Knight Rises trailer in the mode of the trailer for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

It’s a very effectively cut piece and if I didn’t know better, I’d’ve assumed it was the real deal.

The Dark Knight Rises comes out July 20th. I really can’t wait to see it.

I am in no way am writing this to circumvent Bryan Young’s previously posted review of this movie. His early review convinced me to go see the film, even though a lot of the trailers left me wondering why the movie was made in the first place. Then I saw it. I was so immersed and impressed with this movie, that despite a few tiny flaws, The Amazing Spider-Man is unequivocally now my favorite movie ever. After seeing the movie, I felt that I had a burning need to share my feelings. As such, there may be minor spoilers contained within. I’ll do my level best to keep things vague, but you have been warned.

I have an uncanny ability to completely shut off expectations when I go see a movie on the big screen. As soon as the lights go down, I belong to the movie, and it has my undivided attention. Admittedly, this doesn’t make me an excellent film critic. Case in point, when I went to see Superman Returns, I loved it. Subsequent viewings brought me to my senses, but the things I loved about that movie still stand. ASM had a similar affect on me, but this time it wasn’t so much a wow factor as it was a realization. This movie has heart.

A large portion of the movie is character introductions and the like. I don’t think Peter Parker even got bit until about an hour into the film. Browse any geek website for a minute, and you’ll hear cries of why this is unnecessary.  The Raimi movie already established the origin, so why retread? I was firmly in that camp myself. I’ve changed my opinion though. This movie had to re-establish the mythos because of how everything is set up. The characters aren’t exactly the same in the previous movies, and this is a good thing. The way the characters are presented and how it relates to the origin all follow an internal logic that is pretty astounding if you think about it. The actors aren’t simply going through the motions or playing established archetypes. They are truly three dimensional, and when the emotional beats happen you care all the more because of it, even though you know what’s going to happen. It made the movie more real than I could have imagined, and that alone makes it a gem in my eyes.

Of course, the movie’s central character is Peter Parker/Spider-Man and if you can’t relate to him, the movie falls apart. Thankfully, Andrew Garfield is not only up to the task, he exceeds my expectations. Peter’s character arc is slightly different in the movie, as he has abandonment issues, growing up without parents. This is particularly felt with the absence of his father. That’s not to say that Uncle Ben isn’t the kind and wise surrogate he’s always been, because he is. It’s just that in this movie, Peter’s father is the catalyst for everything. Growing up without a father myself, I felt like I really understood Peter’s motivation to uncover the events leading up to Richard Parker’s disappearance, not to mention to really “know” what kind of man he was. The path this leads him on not only ties into the origin nicely, but also sets up many possibilities for future films. In particular, I really like the subtle way the filmmakers go about Norman Osborn. Nothing is explicit (unless you count the mid-credits scene), and it make my anticipation for the sequel higher than normal.

Continuing with Peter, once he gets the fateful spider-bite, I found it pretty interesting how the road to becoming Spider-Man played out. There is the obligatory discovering powers scenes, but they are done with such a sense of whimsy that even though everyone has already seen this play out over other mediums something like a million times before, it somehow feels fresh. No wrestling Macho Man Randy Savage here, folks.  The way Uncle Ben’s fate plays out feel more natural as well, it felt a little coincidental to be honest because the sequence between not stopping a robbery and the fatal shot happens so quickly. It’s one of my only little gripes with the movie. What happens after though? That made me start to hate the movie.

You see, after Uncle Ben’s murder, Peter goes full-on vigilante. He’s cocky, self-assured, and definitely not a hero. In short, grieving Peter is kind of an asshole. This includes the much lamented in trailers “small knives” scene. His cocksuredness even gets him the attention of one Gwen Stacy. This made me groan a little too. However, when Gwen invites Peter to meet the family, including Denis Leary as police captain George Stacy, things start to turn around. While it is true that it is Uncle Ben that teaches Peter about power and responsibility, it’s Captain Stacy that shows him how to be a true hero. Never is that more apparent to me than the bridge scene…

This scene makes me well up every time I see it.

In fact, the movie does scenes with this much emotional impact so well and so often, I’m not ashamed to admit that multiple times this movie made me weep like someone stole my lunch money. And if that isn’t an indicator of how successfully the movie works, nothing is. You’ll notice I didn’t really mention the Lizard at all, or the movie’s central conflict. There’s a reason for that. For me, those bits are just icing and an already pretty good slice of cake. Good as that is, it’s not why I love this movie. For reviews of those bits, look elsewhere.

ShazBot Score: 9.6 out of 10 Lightning Bolts

High Points: Emotional resonance, strong characters, well-woven story

Low Points: Series of coincidences, The Lizard’s face (he looked like a Goomba from the terrible Super Mario Bros. movie!)

When I got an email from Michael Jan Friedman asking if he could participate in our Indie Books column, I was a little surprised. Here’s a guy who has done all kinds of stuff. He’s written novels, episodes of Star Trek, comics…

But even though he has that platform, he’s an Indie, too. He and a number of other guys (including the likes of Peter David, a king among Hulk writers) created an Independent publishing imprint to house their new books called Crazy 8 press.

It’s a brilliant idea and I jumped at the chance to have him tell you about two of his books that Crazy 8 has put out.

So, without further ado, here’s Michael:

Being an author is still an out-of-body experience for me sometimes. I’ve written sixty-eight books, including science fiction, fantasy, media tie-ins, celebrity bios and so on. Go ahead, check it out–I’ll wait. You’ll find that eleven of those books made it to The New York Times primary bestseller list, and that I’ve also scripted an episode of Star Trek: Voyager and nearly two hundred comic book stories. But part of me–a big part–still wakes up in the morning and hopes like hell it’s not all a dream. I guess that’s good in a way. It keeps me humble. It keeps me hungry. It keeps me signing autographs at conventions after a more secure fellow would have snuck off to the bar. Most recently, it’s spurred me to co-found an indie publishing venture called Crazy 8 Press, which brings my work and that of four other science fiction and fantasy authors directly to the reader without the support of a traditional distribution chain. So, if there are five of us, why Crazy 8? Well, you see, that’s the crazy part.

I love the pathos and splendor of the Greek gods and have done so ever since second grade, when I discovered them in a school library book called Greek Myths by Olivia E. Coolidge. In fact, that book was largely responsible for my becoming the writer of nearly seventy novels (eleven of which made The New York bestseller list), almost two hundred comic books, and a first-season episode of Star Trek: Voyager. I also love the physical, fast-paced New York City street game of single-wall handball, and have done so ever since the summer I was eight years old, when the kids on my block began pounding a spaldeen against the sides of our parents’ brick houses. But it wasn’t until now that I combined my two loves into a novel that’s one part love story, one part adventure, one part urban fantasy, and one part ancient mystery, and is–appropriately enough–called Fight The Gods, now available for Kindle, Nook, and paperback readers from Crazy8Press.com.

You’ve heard the dire predictions that in 2012–the year that marked the end of the Aztec and Mayan calendars–the world was supposed to grind to a halt, and our little human civilization along with it. Of course, for the Aztecs, who were conquered by Hernan Cortes in 1521, the year 2012 was no longer a concern. But what if Cortes hadn’t conquered ol’ Moctezuma II? What if the Aztecs had gone on to expand their empire from one end of what we know as the Americas to the other? And what if, in 2012, someone decided to mark the Last Sun by commiting a series of grisly murders reminiscent of the Aztecs’ pagan sacrifices in ancient times? Okay, I thought, so I’ve got a 21st-century Aztec whodunit. Has anybody in the history of publishing ever come up with such a thing? Will anybody read it? Well, I thought, I’ve written almost 70 books for publishers like Simon and Schuster, Harper Collins, and Scholastic. I must have some idea what I’m doing–which is how I had the nerve to write Aztlan: The Last Sun, an e-novella now available for both Kindle and Nook from Crazy8Press.com.

And there you have it. I’m definitely going to be checking these out myself, and a whole bunch of their other books.

The Indie Books column continues to get more and more popular, so I’ve got some more great stuff coming at you soon. Keep checking back for updates!

It’s official! Manga publisher Kodansha and Sailor Moon creator and writer Naoko Takeuchi are bringing us a new Sailor Moon anime next year!!!

The announcement was made during a 20th anniversary celebration for the Sailor Moon manga, and long time fans everywhere (including myself) couldn’t be more excited. Anime News Network brought us this announcement, along with the news that although the original Sailor Moon (Kotono Mitsuishi) and Tuxedo Mask (Tohru Furuya) were at the announcement, they didn’t say specifically if they would reprise their roles as the iconic characters. Although no broadcast details have been released, we do know that the anime will come to us in the Summer of 2013 and that it will have a worldwide, simultaneous broadcast.

After long, long years of being unable to buy anything but Chinese bootlegs of the Sailor Moon DVDs with crummy English subtitles, I can’t help but hope this will mean we might get some official distribution for the long-coveted Sailor Moon collections sometime soon. Please Takeuchi, can was haz?

How many of your are as thrilled as Scarlett, Darcy and I are?  I may or may not have rushed off to immediately watch some of my old DVDs after hearing the news.

In honor of the announcement, I give you a Future Girls Sailor Moon AMV!