Author (#10)April 2006 Archives

Recently Patrick Stewart again raised the question of whether the lastest X-Men movie is the last of a trilogy or just the third in a series. Rather, he raised the question for us as he made the statement that "labeling the third film as 'the last one' could be just a tease to draw audiences to the theater."

Logically we could go with the same track that they did at Cinematical, which is basically that Patrick Stewart is unlikely to have real inside info regarding the producers, directors, and writers. So it might just be the end after all. At the most this could grow into a rumor and at the worst it's individuals' speculation.

To me the X-Men trilogy died when the producers at Fox replaced Bryan Singer with someone else, rather than wait for him to finish a Superman movie. For me this is merely a spin-off.

At the time I wasn't even aware that there was such a contest. I'm not really keen on checking the relevent e-mail account, and more urgently I never quite read the e-mail until a day after the contest was over.

Interestingly enough we had more posts made on a regular basis with Hutch gone than we had or do with Hutch here.

If I actually knew that there was a contest I would have actually used some of the articles in my queue, including that thing on Patrick Stewart and the not-Last Stand. We did a pretty good job and I would definitely not count a few of my posts.

Now if Hutch leaves all of next week we'll be extremely prolific!

The writer leadership for the new Doctor Who series/season appear to be quite un-sentimental and will not be bringing back the old Doctors, the previous incarnations of the Doctor, and is in fact disallowing it with astonishing vehemence.

DOCTOR Who boss Russell T Davies has banned ex-Time Lords from appearing on the show.

The writer has vowed former Doctors will never come back for the sci-fi drama's anniversary specials as they have done in classic BBC episodes.

It means that Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann and Christopher Eccleston won't return to the show.

I'll absolutley grant that he's doing it from a creative standpoint and from some critical basis he's correct.

Davies, 42, said: "I don't like past Doctor adventures. I've never liked it when Doctors met other Doctors because I think it's an actors' parade.

"You're not watching the Doctors, you're watching party pieces - so it won't happen."

He also does not want to make younger and/or newer viewers feel excluded or anything like that. From my perspective (and that of many I would assume) it simply means that Tom Baker's Doctor will not appear with other Doctors or the present one. There will be no nostalgic fun for anyone in that vein. It also means that we will never, in the near future, see how Paul McGann regenerated into Christopher Eccleston. What a shame.

It is not outside of good taste to recognize the past. Half the fun of having a time travel programme is skirting your past or colliding with it head-on.

Frankly, if small children get Power Rangers teaming up from way in the past, why the heck cannot we grown-ups get Doctors Who?

I approve!

Today we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I will not take this as an opportunity to share my beliefs.

I will simply send you well wishes; and I love that cartoon.

The simplest explanation for this post is simply that I had and in some ways still have certain expectations of us. It's an obscure game and this point the game is very obscure. You may think I am mad for expecting deep secrets revealed on something so esoteric but nerds/geeks/whatever are a certain brand of folk!

We love these certain things before they became popular, maintain our preferences our fellows' common enjoyment, and then continue liking cool stuff long after it ceased being popular.
So I expected a certain something from the kind of men and women such as we.

I was and am disapointed. I will get over it someday.

ABC broadcasts a presentation of The Ten Commandments?

Good movie. Wrong Testament.

Fine tradition.

I among many remember a PC game back in the early nineties (and late eighties) entitled X-Men: Madness in Murderworld. It was made for a couple of PC types but definitely for DOS and it was manufactured/produced by Paragon Software. I played it and enjoyed it. Others played it and enjoyed it. I own an original copy. It even came with this neat comic.

Did anyone with any sense of public service or even pride defeat the goshdamned game?!

Without looking I discovered a complete walkthrough to Douglas Adams' text game adapting Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The same could be said for some other stuff.

Paragon made their first X-Men game with fighting and puzzle-solving,. For a small variety of fair-quality reasons I never finished the game. I never defeated it. I want to know how to beat the game when and if I go back. It was my first PC game ever and I love it and more importantly there is much sentimental value.

Over on the Byrne Robotics Forums famed writer-artist John Byrne lists ten good disqualifications from writing super-hero comics.

Obviously if none of the traits on the list apply to you specifically, then the "you" in the title isn't you personally.

In fact, if none of then apply to you then I encourage you to start trying to break into comics again.

Ultimately it's about respecting the character and remembering that the core aspect of a super-hero story in the super-hero genre isn't people not in costumes not doing super-heroic things.

Notions that the upcoming sequel to Batman Begins will be good take a major hit to the soft parts as the rumor floats that Robin Williams will be cast as the Joker!

While we're looking at the relevent news article and interview, let's take some shots at it.

Norm Breyfogle used to be the penciller of Batman, which of course was the main title of the Batman comics franchise and the second-longest running series for the character. Then he left that tile for Batman: Shadow of the Bat. From an interview on Silver Bullet Comics

Offenberger: Why did you leave the main Batman title to do Shadow of the Bat?

Breyfogle: I was encouraged to do so at a Batman summit conference wherein the Batman creative and editorial folk got together yearly to discuss the next year's plans.

Offenberger: Was Shadow of the Bat considered more prestigious then Batman at the time?

Breyfogle: I thought so, but in hindsight I see that if I'd stayed on Batman I'd've drawn the 500th issue, and that one issue really ended up paying off much, much better than Shadow of the Bat ever did for those that worked on it.

Dang it.

I know why Alan Grant went to do Shadow of the Bat. I will go into that later, I think.

The interesting part of the interview is the implication that Marvel Comics is screwing the writers of the old Ultraverse properties simply by refusing to use them.