Gotham Underground #8

I have a new review up at Comics Bulletin.

Gotham Underground #8 (3 out of 5)

It's Batman versus Vigilante while Gotham City is falling apart from gang war. Johnny Stitches pulls the rug under Penguin by chopping people up, threatening to chop up family and getting a reluctant ally to leave Penguin's side. Things aren't looking good for Penguin or Gotham, but Batman is finally back and I'm left wondering...where the crap did Spoiler go??? [more]

Until next time... Marx out.

Smallville “Reckoning” 100th Episode

Or…I reckon this one was 50% good.

Do not read further if you don’t want to be spoiled by moi, ok.

First off, I want to say that this has been the best season of Smallville so far. I’ve always watched this series off and on through the years, but usually only found the season premieres, season finales, and a handful of episodes in-between to be anything special. This season, we have seen Clark and his friends head off to college, battle Brainiac, and Lex show his true colors.

Oh yeah, and Clark got laid.

But, alas, all good things must come to an end. This 100th episode (that I was actually looking forward to) greatly disappointed me.

Sniff, sniff. Not just because I’m sorry to see Jonathan Kent die. But, I must endure more of the Lana/Clark/Lex triangle. Grr, Argh. Make it stop!

I was nearly blown away during the first half hour (get it?…”I reckon it was 50% good”). We had Lana learning the truth (Finally! How dense is she anyway?), Clark proposing (Unexpected – well except one of the commercials showed it, but it led me to believe they might actually have the hazelnuts to kill her off.), and then Lana’s death (booyah!). This blew me away…I thought, “Wow, they actually went against canon. They completely surprised everyone. Did Joss Whedon write this episode?” Then I thought, “Wow, until this moment I didn’t realize how perfect it would be if Lana died. Clark would never want to tell his secret to someone else he cared about. No more Clark angst about Lana, someone who is starting to look really stupid for not figuring this secret out yet. And now a perfect reason for Clark to hate Lex and a tragedy that would drive Lex completely to the darkside.”

Ah, but who knew that the writers would pull a page from Star Trek or Witchblade. Clark whines to Jor-El about how unfair it is that Lana is dead (this is when I started to get worried). I thought, “No, don’t you dare.” Then Jor-El does the whole, “gee there is this crystal that can turn back time” thing. You see, he has been saving it for a special occasion. Saving his people from his homeworld BLOWING UP didn’t really count, but I guess saving Clark’s girlfriend would be the right time. Frak! What can’t Jor-El (aka Mr. Deus Ex Machina) not do? He can take Clark’s power away. He can give Clark’s powers back. He can give powers to other people. Oh, and he can turn back time…I don’t buy it.

So, then time reboots. Lana is saved, but breaks up with Clark because he won’t tell her his secret. Clark’s dad dies from that pesky heart damage. The only way, this episode’s Tru Calling moment could have worked was if Lana died in the end anyway. Man, that would have been shocking and would have made this episode the best of the whole series. Instead, I feel that Jonathan’s death is trivialized because of the time restart gimmick.

So, on one hand the writers made me care enough about this season that I truly got angry by this episode (kudos), but if they don’t shape up and either get rid of Lana or have her learn the secret, I don’t think I will stick with the series next season. Hey, why don’t they hook Clark up with the mermaid chick that was his college sweetheart in the comics? I’m just so tired of this Lana/Clark mess. Could you tell?

Review: Blood and Brains

Zombies, the other dead meat. Not only are they one of the few supernatural creatures in folklore that start with the letter Z, but they also are really, really big in movies and games right now. Don’t believe me? Look at the recent movies: Land of the Dead, Resident Evil 2, 28 Days Later, Undead, etc. Look at games like the uber-popular video game series Resident Evil (and its many wannabe clones). And there are even entire RPGs that focus only on those smelly, shuffling brain eaters.

If you play RPGs of the D20 Modern flavor and you want to add the Zombie genre into your game, then you really need Blood and Brains: The Zombie Hunter’s Guide. This 56 page PDF book is written by Michael Tresca (Blood and Blades, etc) and published by RPG Objects. This book covers everything (and more) that you have ever seen in movies, television, and games that dealt with the Zombie persuasion.

The book starts out with background info on what exactly a Zombie is. Then, we are given new occupation choices: Boy Scout, Cheerleader, Jock, Mental Patient, NCRPC (National Center for Reanimation Prevention and Control) Employee, Nerd, Prep, Scream Queen, Stoner, and Y-Mart Employee. By the way, you can find classes of these occupations in Blood and Blades. Advanced classes: Bokor (a spellcaster that creates and controls zombies), Mad Scientist, Necromancer, Psychokinetic (bend that spoon), and Zombie Hunter.

There are also many excellent Zombie genre hack & slash feats like Backhand Slash (handy when those pesky Zombies sneak up behind you), Bring It On (you’re too crazy to worry about madness ratings), Chainsaw Impale (sweet, need I say more?), Cool (pressure, what pressure?), First Impression (shotgun go boom, scare weak creatures), Hardware (you knew that your hardware department experience would help you someday), Improvised Implements (tools, I don’t need no stinking tools), Improvised Weapons (anything around is a deadly weapon), Improvised Weapon Damage (now the pen is truly mightier than the sword), Over The Shoulder (who wouldn’t want to shoot a shotgun over their shoulder and hit that zombie behind them), Rifle Spin (remember that lever-action rifle spin reload trick in Terminator 2? Now you can do it too.), Slapstick (when you fight hand to hand you fight dirty), Stud (handy with the opposite sex), Suck On This (a classic zombie-killing shotgun technique), Virgin (very useful in horror movies-but that’s about it), and Whatever (you don’t frighten easily).

Chapter 2 deals with the fine art of Zombie Hunting, with new weapons, including chainsaws and gatling guns. Sometimes you survive, but not without losing a chunk to those nasty zombies. Hence, the section on prosthetics. And there are new options for fighting with guns and a small section on madness rules. You can find a more detailed version of these madness rules in Blood and Blades, by the way. Chapter 3 deals with new powers and spells. Two of my favorite spells are Possess Zombie and Zombie Belch.

Then, Chapter 4, the chapter with every kind of Zombie-like creature you can think of. There are even a few not so Zombie-like creatures that you wouldn’t expect, like the Hsing-Sing (a Bigfoot like race from the Himalayas), Creep (alien parasites that turn their victims, including the Hsing-Sing, into zombies), and the Trillian (weird 50’s looking aliens that kill people with gas and turn them into zombies). There are also 21 variations of zombies, including Atomic, Nazi, Radiation, Toxic, Ultrasonic, and Radiation Zombies. Ah, then let us not forget one of the best sections in the whole book…the Zombie template, which has a chart full of abilities that can be randomly assigned. One of my favorites is the TV travel under the movement section, which allows zombies to travel through TV sets.

I give this book a B+. It would have been an A, but I would have liked to have seen some of the earlier chapters fleshed out more (pun intended). More information on the National Center for Reanimation Prevention and Control would have been nice too. Also, more on the madness rules would have been good (which you can find more info on in Tresca’s Blood and Blades). But overall an excellent book with some great fiction sprinkled throughout. If you combine this with Tresca’s Blood and Blades and Blood and Spooks, you can cover just about anything found in horror films.

So, if you are serious about adding Zombies into your game, then this is the book for you. Your players will never know what kind of Zombie they will run into next. Trust me, after your players run into a Video Zombie, they will never feel safe watching TV again.

Dungeons & Dragons 2: Wrath of the Bad Script & Terrible Special Effects

I saw the new D&D movie, Dungeons & Dragons 2: Wrath of the Dragon God, on the Scifi Channel over the weekend. It suffered from a very low Charisma score that could not keep me entertained. As a fan of D&D and other role-playing games (see http://www.roleplay.org/ if you don’t know what a role-playing game is), I was actually looking forward to this film. Unfortunately, the dream was better than the reality.

The Good:

Kudos for the references to D&D rule mechanics (the barbarian with the rage problem, the teleportation limitation, spell slots, and having a D&D style cleric). Even more Kudos for the clever introduction of the barbarian and the terrible, but yet slightly humorous, fate of the wizard’s familiar. Triple Kudos for the excellent acting skills of Mark Dymond as Berek and Clemency Burton-Hill as Melora who both somehow managed to pull off some terrible dialog, and somehow added depth to otherwise depthless characters. Ditto for Bruce Payne as Damodar. Damodar wasn’t written as badly as Profion from the first movie, but Damodar was nowhere near as cool as he was in the first film (although that wasn’t apparently the same character…now I’m confused).

The Bad:

The script for this sequel is poor. I actually liked the first film, in a sort of that’s campy but worth watching on DVD "kind of way." I would probably give the first film a C.

But this second film was less campy, but more booorriiinnnggg. I’ll take campy any day over a 2.5 hour television movie that moves at a snail's pace. Ok, I’m going to sound like a cliché, but where was the bad guy’s “motivation.” Damodar comes back to life and the first thing he wants to do is destroy everything and rule over its ashes? OK. And that darn Lich. A – it was cool that they added a major creature from D&D (plus they also had a Magmin), but B – I don’t understand why he did anything he did. The “I’m evil” excuse just really isn’t good enough.

I’m also confused by the script. It almost appears that the film was originally going to be tied directly into the first film, but then it got hacked to pieces. For example, Damodar (who has the same name and is played by the same actor as the character in the first film) apparently isn’t the Damodar from the first film. At first Damodar says he was turned into an undead due to a curse by his master which activated when Damodar died. That doesn’t conflict with the first film, but then we find out that this Damodar died by accidentally teleporting into a wall. So…apparently not Damodar from the first film. Not to mention, this Damodar fought like a wussy Halfling, so he is definitely not the same kick ass Damodar from the first film.

I also thought, at first, that the two main characters (Berek and Melora) were the two main characters from the first film years later. Not so, but they sure seem similar… Perhaps that had been the original plan.

It may be just me, but this whole film seemed like a game session converted into a script. It even had a random encounter...those pesky bandits. Although having a game session turned into a movie is cool in a fanboy sort of way, it doesn't really make for a very good movie.

The setting for this film is generic (why not use Krynn, Faerûn, or Eberron), the characters have no depth (unlike characters from many of the Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, or Ravenloft books), and the story is also generic. Why reinvent the wheel, when there are already so many great D&D stories and settings to draw from?

The Ugly:

The special effects weren’t very special. I’ve actually seen TV series with better special effects, so I’m not surprised that this film didn’t make it to the big screen. Plus the make up was so-so. The goblin looked terrible. The Lich wasn’t as bad, but it didn’t look anything like how a Lich usually is depicted in art from the books. They also did some funky graphics in the beginning that just didn’t come out quite right.

I give this film a D+. Fitting for a film named D&D I suppose. Sorry, D&D fans, but a D&D film should be, dare I say deserves to be, better than this.