Scott Pilgrim

CONTAINS SPOILERS, DO NOT READ UNTIL YOU HAVE READ SCOTT PILGRIM

I love this comic series even though I have only had the pleasure to read it once. I can't remember much in terms of describing beyond the basic plot and some of the main characters. I don't usually like things with a love story as core to the plot but it really worked with Scott Pilgrim. The idea of Scott having to fight Ramona's seven evil exes seemed unique to me although now that I think about it it does have a certain Ranma half air about it.

The fact that one of Ramona's exes was female intrigued and appealed to me, not in that way though! It added a certain feminist aesthetic and ideal to what is already a brilliant comic. Overall I love it because of what I have said above but also because it is funny, good looking (particularly the manga esque art), smart, contains various pop culture references including geeky aspects, it has adorable characters and a great juxtaposition of more unreal/fantasy elements with things we all feel in reality and realism with the way the characters live their daily lives.

Possibly the most awesome image from Scott Pilgrim, but there's a lot of awesomeness in this series.

Now over to Norman Osborn for his say.

Thank you Geordie Green Lantern. Today I approve of 1ups and the power of love!

Games I love which can be irritating: Part 3: Super Smash Brothers Melee and Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time

Super Smash Brothers Melee

This is probably my favourite game aside from Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, but it can be terribly annoying. Admittedly it only really gets difficult when you try to complete the game 100 percent by getting all the trophies. The game has a very adaptable learning curve in that you can be crap and finish the game but you could be a master and still have a good challenge. The most frustrating aspect is the randomness of the game with item distribution but also how cheap and dirty the opponents can be, especially when they team up against you.

Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

As far as I'm concerned this is the greatest Zelda game of them all. It has excellent music, good graphics for the time, a good plot, interesting characters, great cutscenes, nice challenges and a sufficient amount of minigames and extra bits. It is not without flaws which any game no matter how good it is has. I hate water levels in games, OOT has a big and puzzling level like that. I hate the shadow temple even more since you can frequently die. It annoyed me how I could never get all the heart pieces (not that I needed them but still). Also I could never find the last 5 gold skulltullas.

This is what you get when you survive through the shadow temple...

Now it's that time of the blog where I pass you over to my guest Norman Osborn.

Thank you Geordie Green Lantern. Today I approve of The Hammer in Smash Brothers Melee and Biggeron's Sword.

Games which I love but which can be irritating: Part 2: Shinobi and Sonic

Shinobi (Game Gear)

I never got far into this game but it was one of my favourites as a child, I think I mainly liked it because you could switch between different coloured ninja who had unique powers depending on their colour code. I guess I have liked colour coded heroes ever since I got into the power Rangers and Captain Scarlet, neither of which I am into anymore. I outgrew them but the colour coded aspect still remains, this was a major factor of me becoming a fan of Green Lantern comics when I read Geoff Johns' "Rebirth" arc.



Go go Power... oops I mean lantern Corps!


Anyway I digress. These ninja had different powers but you could only use their special powers so many times before you had to find a power up to restore your ninja magic meter, or whatever it was called. Sometimes it was difficult to work out which ninja to use in a situation but there were also times where you knew which ninja to use but don't switch in time so you fell into some bottomless cavern, acid pit or spikes. It was made even harder as was the case with other older games, the lack of a save point.


Sonic (Megadrive, Master System, Playstation 2, Gamecube, Nintendo DS)


The classic Sonic games are amongst my favourites. Generally with the classic four (1, 2, 3 and Sonic and Knuckles), the lack of savepoints was a problem, because with a bit of practice you could do it in stages even if you are crap like I was. Even without using the save function (a permanent save rather than just checkpoint saves) I was with practice able to get to the ending of the first Sonic game with all 6 chaos emeralds in one go without saving.

However I couldn't finish Sonic 2 or 3 at all never mind get all 7 Chaos Emeralds without saving. In Sonic 2 the chaos emeralds are harder to get the more you get. You need more rings in each progressive Chaos Emerald minigame. I managed to finish the first 3 Sonic games but even though I enjoyed Sonic and Knuckles I could never finish it. The levels were too long and the game got really hard at about the Egypt themed level.

And now over to my regular guest and his approvals: Norman Osborn!

My thanks Geordie Green Lantern. Today I approve of: colourful but deadly ninja and chaos emeralds.

Games I love which can be frustrating: Part 1: Pokemon Platinum and Metal Gear Solid

There are computer games which we can love but even so some of these games can really frustrate us. Some of these frustrations can come from the difficulty of the game, but there are other factors such as some items being nearly impossible to attain, not having much health for the task, timed challenges and limits, a really annoying level or two, trouble finding the last few tokens and so on.

This blog entry is about computer games I love still or have cherished memories of but which have some frustrating parts. Here are games I loved or still love but have annoyed me in parts:

1. Pokemon Platinum (Nintendo DS)

When I last played a Pokemon game before I bought Platinum when I was in my final year of university, I was about 12 or 13 back in the days when Britain only had Pokemon Red and Blue and there were only 150 Pokemon to catch. Since then the total up to Platinum is around the 500 mark. This would be fair enough if you could "catch em' all" as they say, in the one game, but as far as I'm concerned Japan with the new Pokemon games has taken obsessive compulsive disorder to a new level, 2 levels in fact.


The first level of annoyance: You need to catch Pokemon in more than one game. Although this can be fun if you are bored, the frustration comes from the hours of levelling up in order to stand a chance of being able to get some of the more difficult monsters. For example it took me 40 hours of gaming to be able to reach and catch Mewtwo on Pokemon Fire Red for my Platinum team. Overall this level isn't too bad because Pokemon are available if you fork out the cash for Nintendo's "Pokemon Corporation" subsidiary, i.e. buy the other games.


The second and supreme level of annoyance: the so called "event Pokemon". Nintendo actually made it impossible to catch all the current Pokemon unless you fulfil the following conditions: A. you cheat somehow or B. go to one of the limited edition and expensive to get to events. I don't consider event Pokemon as part of the completion list.

2. Metal Gear Solid (Playstation)

My first annoyance for this game would be the damn stairs where you can't be stealthy, there weren't any health packs and the enemies shooting at you on the way up seemed nearly endless. I could never do this bit without the invincibility cheat in my disc.



The next annoyance was the battle with the sniper, where you had to lie on the ground to be able to aim properly, and you had to take some sort of drug, diazepam I think it was to keep yourself from shaking and aim your sniper rifle properly. If you were standing you would be shot from above but if you were lying down you still had a high chance of getting shot. Either way aiming was more difficult it usually was.





Now over to Mr. Osborn for his words of approval.

Thank you Geordie Green Lantern. Today I approve of: catching them all and hiding in boxes.

Prometheus Bound

For the PaperJam Comics Collective "Art and that" anthology my contribution to the comic was based on Gustave Moreau's "Prometheus Bound" painting. I had to replace the poem that I was going to use as my script because it was too long.

Here is the painting:

Here is the poem as I intended it to be originally:

The Grecian Gods can be childish,
smiting and smashing on a whim,
jealous furies amongst the worst,
but some become heavenly stars.

Prometheus made the humans,
but could not deliver the fire,
igniting spark of human life
but not warming deathly cold flesh.

He stole from Apollo’s carriage,
stole the heavenly fire of life,
his sacrifice for the humans
caused that God great personal strife.

The other Gods weren’t merciful
to their fellow Prometheus,
they bound him to sturdy cold chains,
releasing the eagle of Zeus.

So, bound with daily liver loss
Prometheus suffered for man,
a symbol for humanity,
hence Moreau's "Prometheus Bound". *

*My official poem ends with "the Greek God of fire and humans" but that wouldn't have went as well in the context of the anthology, even though I didn't get to use the entire poem only fragments where I could adapt them.

The odds are there will be at least 1 PaperJam Comics Collective member reading this, so I have this to say. What I have seen so far of the other Art and That pieces looks great. I'm really looking forward to seeing the other pieces in their entirety.

Now to my regular guest Norman Osborn.

Thank you Geordie Green Lantern. Today I approve of: Gods who have the balls to stand up to other Gods.

Goodbye Fullmetal Alchemist!

It's been a while since my last post but I'm back! According to my diary, the final chapter of the manga Fullmetal Alchemist was scanlated (scanned and translated) in English on the 10th of this June. Therefore I read the final chapter on that date.

Anyway this post will be solely dedicated to the masterpiece manga called FMA. The series ended as well as it began, and indeed as brilliantly as the journey in the middle.

What makes the series so good? This is a question you may ask me. My answer? Well it's a combination of factors really. First of all we have the story, which at it's core is deeply philosophical for shonen manga.

It deals with such themes as "don't play God" (trying to bring your mother back from death), the consequences and evil of war and genocide, the nature and purpose of human beings, the notion of truth and the soul amongst other aspects.

It does what shonen manga does best, conquers difficulties while keeping it's sprit up. There are challenges the many heroes face, but they always do it with absolute determination .

Shonen manga are typically created by males, FMA isn't and I'm convinced this helps make the series that bit different and therefore better than the average shonen title. Shonen typically sticks to well defined conventions. FMA plays the rules of the game, but Hiromu Arakawa adds brilliant feminine touches in her manga as shown here:

That montage wasn't in FMA but the picture of the big muscular sparkly guy there (Alex Lois Armstrong) certainly was. Arakawa tends to add little bits here in there that seem closer to shojo manga than shonen, but this enhances the manga overall as far as I'm concerned.

One of the greatest things about FMA if we move away from stylistic features or the story itself is the characters. The narrative itself is great, in that it is epic, funny and deep but it's made even better by a colourful cast of characters.

Unlike many shonen (say Naruto or Bleach) characters are strong irrespective of gender, the female characters are just as badass as the males.

Well that's a nice note to finish my part of this blog on, an image featuring my 2 favourite characters of the series, Olivia Armstrong and Izumi Curtis. Now, It's time for Osborn's approval, hit it Norms!

My thanks Geordie Green Lantern. Today I approve of: Techniques passed down the Armstrong line for generations!

Dr Who meets Vincent Van Gogh

Beware do not read this until you have seen the 10th episode of the Matt Smith Dr. Who series.

Warning aside, I may now proceed. This has got to be my favourite episode of the series so far. As little as I know about art movements and artists outside of American and Japanese comics, I do like Van Gogh. His art was beautiful, but more than that he expressed his soul through his art, turning his own depression into a work of beauty.

This episode to some extent conveys that. The episode itself was quite touching in various parts, I really felt for Gogh when the had to kill that invisible alien beast. I really enjoyed watching this episode.

I thought this scene was particularly beautiful in the episode:

Now for my regular guest: Norman Osborn

My thanks Geordie Green Lantern. Today I approve of Sunflowers.