Heroes Con 2012! I Will Be There, Will You?

Hey! I will be at Heroes Con from Friday through Sunday this week, moderating a couple of panels over the weekend (With the Immonens! With Don Rosa! With Geof Darrow!) and selling copies of "Grant Morrison: The Early Years," "Teenagers from the Future," "Minutes to Midnight," and maybe more!

I will be set up at table AA-215. Stop by and pick up a book. Or just stop by to say hi!

See you there!

Playtesting DnDNext Part 6: Mini-Taur

Partially disoriented by the magical befuddlement of the Minotaur Maze in the Caves of Chaos, Bob the Dwarf, Lily the Halfling, Cary Cycax, and new girl Lucy battled a dozen pesky stirges, which didn't do much damage but took about ten rounds to wipe out and didn't gain them a single coin of treasure, which they didn't much enjoy.

Aimlessly wandering left, then right, then left, they chanced upon the cavern that led straight to the Minotaur's hangout. Making plenty of noise as they approached (they all rolled below 10 on Dexterity or Stealth rolls), the Minotaur came charging.

For this big battle -- likely the final combat before Television's Ryan Callahan and the heart-and-soul of Cary Cycax had to head back to New York City as the weekend drew to a close -- I decided to spring the Dwarven Forge pieces out of semi-retirement. It was a chance to test D&D Next with a tactical battlefield. The theater of the mind gave way to miniatures and 5'x5' squares. Line of sight could be clearly determined. It was new D&D, 4e style.

And it felt like it.

I like playing 4th Edition, and I've seen players of all ages pull some fun tactical combos during combat. But D&D Next, until this Dwarven-Forge-enabled session with the Minotaur, felt more wide open. Anything was possible.

The Minotaur battle, with the D&D Next rules, but the detailed 3D battlefield and miniatures felt clinical compared to the fun we'd been having with the new rules until then. Here's what happens: once you turn the game from a conversational, improvisational, imaginative game with some dice rolls to a game that has a board and tiny little figures and a specific dimensionality, the creativity turns from artistic imaginings and "yes, and..." to precise tactical moves and linear decision-making.

Let me put it this way, when you play Monopoly, you don't imagine that you are actually a giant top hat marching through Atlantic City, wheeling and dealing with renters. Once D&D takes a miniature-based focus, it becomes a game where the attention is on what's in front of the players on the game board, rather than what the players themselves are doing and saying.

And 4th Edition cannot accurately be played without miniatures and battle maps. D&D Next can. And should.

It was a good idea to test D&D Next, in this Minotaur encounter, with minis, to see what happened. But the battle was dry, almost colorless, compared to the previous battles. So now we know. Leave the Dwarven Forge in the basement. Use it to re-enact Dolph Lundgren Punisher scenes with Heroclix.

The Minotaur battle also taught us another thing about the mechanics of D&D Next. The "Disadvantage" disadvantage is devastating. The Minotaur was blinded in the first round, and though he lashed out at Bob the Dwarf and hit him a few times, he stumbled over rubble and missed far more often than he hit. And Lily and Cary Cycax blasted away from a distance, doing over 100 damage to the Minotaur in just over a handful of quick rounds.

It's worth noting that D&D Next, already accused of giving less options to characters, didn't become roll-hit/miss/damage/or-not/go until we played with the miniatures. It was the context of the game, not the rules themselves, that changed it to become more vanilla.

Luckily, the flavor returned to the game when the Minotaur was killed, Cary Cycax cut off his head as a trophy and the hidden treature horde was found. Secure in the hidden treasure room, the adventurers camped out and took their first long rest since entering either the Gallery of Death or the Minotaur Maze. And with some time on his hands, and the smithing/armoring skills of Lily the Halfling, Cary Cycax decided to customize his scale mail, by weaving the Owlbear hide into his protective gear.

By the next morning, the adventurers were ready for more, and Cary Cycax, Cleric of Pelor, had a new, intimidating look to match the brave face he wore as he prepared for further adventures in the Caves of Chaos:

THE END (FOR NOW)

Playtesting DnDNext Part 5: Owlbear Rug

The Owlbear, as it turned out, wasn't particularly difficult to kill at all. A few well-placed blasts of holy light, some hacks from the greataxe and smashes of the warhammer, and a sneaky backstab and the Owlbear was slain before he could knock any of the good guys unconscious.

Because of the low hit point totals for the adventurers, after their Ooze troubles, I did lower the Owlbear's hit points (figuring that it would make for a more even matchup, and it made in-story sense since the creature would have just finished fighting and possibly devouring Lucy's friends just moments before).

But I didn't need to lower the hit point total. They would have easily defeated the Owlbear anyway.

They decided to take a short rest in the Owlbear's lair, and Lily noticed that her character sheet gave her a trade that she hadn't yet talked about. She decided she had a blacksmith background, and between the metal of Lucy's fallen comrades and the equipment they all had in their packs, she could repair the armor and weapons damaged by the Ooze.

Meanwhile, Cary Cycax skinned the Owlbear, taking its pelt as a trophy.

After their rest, they checked out the final section of the Gallery of Death, and decided not to mess with the remaining Ooze. They'd had enough. Bob, Lily, Cary Cycax, and their new Cleric pal Lucy (who, if not a muppet played by an 8-year-old girl, would likely have been drawn into fierce theological arguments by Cary Cycax) crept back out into the thicket outside the caves and decided to climb higher, looking for another cave entrance.

What they found was mythical. Literally. From that Perseus story. It's pretty famous.

Google maps would have placed them at 1 Minotaur Main Street, Caves of Chaos, Gygaxianville.

TO BE CONTINUED

Playtesting DnDNext Part 4: The Ooze

Instead of returning to the Kobold-kluttered entrance to the Caves of Chaos, Bob the Dwarf, Lily that Halfling, and the legendary Cary Cycax headed deeper into the ravine straight into the Gallery of Death, where they faced one wandering monster after another, starting with the vicious Gray Ooze.

The acidic watery tendrils of the Ooze bludgeoned Bob the Dwarf, eating into the shiny new shield and the fear of metallic decay on the heavily armed-and-armored warrior led him to flee the scene and gather his thoughts alone in the thicket outside as his allies tried to tackle the Ooze, without much luck.

Cary Cycax blasted the Ooze with holy light and Lily flung rocks from her sling, but the tide didn't turn in favor the intrepid heroes until Bob remembered that he had a piece of equipment to be named later, "from a previous campaign," according to his character sheet. He declared that it was an Obsidian Sword, a normal melee weapon in all respects, but invulnerable to the Ooze's metal-destroying touch.

Awesome. He hacked it to bits.

A handful of roaming rats nibbled at their ankles as they marched onward, deeper into the Gallery of Death, their footsteps crunching over the bones of other, less able, adventurers. (Probably from the original edition, when a Magic-User would get stuck with 2 hit points and cloth armor for extra deathening.)

The noise of footsteps, clanking armor rushing toward them, echoed through the caverns.

It was Lucy, Cleric of Moradin. Played by...my daughter's muppet.

My daughter declared, at the beginning of the day's game, before entering the Gallery of Death, that her muppet wanted to play too. So...a chance to test out the Cleric of Moradin, with the muppet rolling her dice and a tiny voice from behind the chair making decisions for the character. (Don't let my daughter know, but I could totally see her moving the muppet's arms and mouth. Shh.)

Lucy the Cleric of Moradin had lost her party in the caverns. They had been killed by the Owlbear who took the bodies back to its lair.

Bob, Lily, and Cary Cycax joined Lucy in her quest for vengeance, with Owlbear hate in their hearts, and lingering injuries from the Ooze battle. But they were not to be deterred. There was an Owlbear to kill, and how difficult could that be?

TO BE CONTINUED

Playtesting DnDNext Part 3: The Legend of Cary Cycax

Part Three of my family's continuing adventures in playtesting DnDNext. Read Part One and Part Two if you haven't. Both good.

Day One of playtesting, about 45 minutes total, brought Bob and Lily into wily combat with wandering Bugbears and guardians of a nasty Kobold nest. There was little role-playing, but plenty of improvisational battle moves.

Day Two of playtesting brought a different flavor, with the arrival of Television's Ryan Callahan, who joined our playtest group for the weekend, playing the righteous Cleric of Pelor, named Cary Cycax.

Television's Ryan Callahan played Cary Cycax as a declarative huckster of the sun god, proselytizing with nearly every sentence he uttered.

Bob and Lily joined forces with Cary Cycax to journey back into the CAVES OF CHAOS, but first they headed to the town of Mort, which they made up, because they said they could rest there and get some supplies.

On the way to Mort, only a few miles hike through the deforested landscape -- Mort was built using a primitive clear-cutting strategy -- they were attacked by a pair of Goblin brigands who were easily dispatched by the ray of light from Cary Cycax's staff and the vicious cleaver of Bob the Dwarf. Television's Ryan Callahan, unprompted, eloquently described the soul of a dead Goblin leaving his body, as his corpse withered under the eye of Pelor. Playing off this kind of make-up-the-details-as-you-go roleplaying, my son described the gushing blood from his Goblin victim washing over his Dwarven body, healing all his wounds with magical power.

I vetoed that one.

For everyone on the D&D forums whining about how DnDNext relies too much on DM fiat, I will say as I have always said, "any decent DM will say yes to anything, unless it is completely out of the realm of even fake-medieval-super-magical reality." So no magical healing blood spewing from Goblin bodies all of a sudden.

When they arrived at Mort, I had each player name one famous town landmark. My daughter said, "The Great Window," my son said, "The Casino," and Television's Ryan Callahan said, "The Bottomless Trough." "Is that the name of an all-you-can eat restaurant?" "No, it's just a trough, that's bottomless."

The Great Window turned out to be a platform looking out in the distance toward a simmering volcano. The Bottomless Trough turned out to be less interesting than it sounds, and it didn't even sound interesting. And the Casino -- renamed The Gaming House of Mort -- led to a rousing game of Three Dragon Ante, where Lily the Halfling used her "Luck" to win a handful of gold pieces and a Dwarven heavy shield for Bob's use -- assuming he could find a one-handed weapon to use instead of relying on his greataxe. Didn't those dead Goblins have maces? They did. Bob could run back outside of town and pick his choice of bloody Goblin mace for no money down and no easy payments of 0 gps per day.

The party slept at The Inn. Tomorrow, THE RETURN TO THE CAVES OF CHAOS, healed-up and now with a heavy shield. Of justice.

Speaking of justice, friend, have you let the divine light of Pelor into your heart?

TO BE CONTINUED

Playtesting DnDNext Part 2: Kobold and Run

Part Two of my family's continuing adventures in playtesting DnDNext. Read Part One if you haven't. It's good.

After defeating the Bugbears, and getting mightily bruised in the process with no healing in sight (without a Cleric around, healing doesn't much happen in DnDNext until an overnight sleepover), Bob the Fightin' Dwarf and Lily the Rogueish Halfling entered the CAVES OF CHAOS [Booming voice].

Tentatively.

Though accustomed to balanced encounters and passive perception from 4th Edition, my son, playing Bob, was wise enough to slowly lead the procession into the nearest cave entrance, where he uncovered a dangerous pit trap before falling into it himself.

That pit trap would become the centerpiece of their entire anti-Kobold strategy soon enough, for within a round, six Kobold guards chanced upon our already-battered heroes.

Spear-flinging and responsive strategy ensued.

My daughter, playing Lily, leaped backwards over the pit and enticed the Kobolds to try to come toward her, picking them off with her sling when they tried to maneuver around the fragile edges of the ten-foot drop. Bob swung his greataxe with gusto, slamming nearby Kobolds into cavern walls and -- in a desperate move with only a few hit points remaining -- swung his axe into the spine of one last Kobold, catapulting its corpse on top of its fallen brethren in the pit below.

Two of the Kobolds had already fled deeper into the caves, presumably to get help, but our tiny wounded party didn't pursue. They staggered out of the mouth of the cave, into the sunlight, seeking help. They couldn't delve further without healing, or without assistance from the gods.

Luckily, Cary Cycax, Cleric of Pelor, was only a few hundred feet away.

TO BE CONTINUED

Playtesting DnDNext Part 1: Bugbears Eat Meat

As you may (or may not) know, Wizards of the Coast released their public beta test of the new D&D rules yesterday. Currently called "DnDNext" or some variation of that, the rules are stripped-down and much more in tune with the simpler, earlier editions, pre-bloat, and they are a clear attempt by Wizards to engage players young and old by paring D&D back to its most essential components, while still making the system run smoothly.

The playtest rules are closer in spirit to the game I first started playing -- with the Moldvay Basic rules, 30 years ago -- than the 4th Edition rules that have been the core game for the past three years.

My daughter, the artist in the family, just discovered my Basic D&D books last week, after asking about how long I've been playing. When I showed her all the dungeon maps I created when I was 10, she busted out the old graph paper and started making her own, full of traps and secret doors and dangerous passages.

She's part of my DnDNext playtest team, definitely, with her two years of experiences (even at only age 8) with 4th Edition, and her multiple-sessions-worth-of-experience with both Gamma World and Mutants & Masterminds. She prefers Dexterity-heavy sneak-attack characters in every kind of game she plays.

The other member of my DnDNext playtest team is my son, now age 11, who has also been playing 4th Edition D&D for two years, along with Gamma World and Mutants & Masterminds. He likes to play weapons-master characters, ones that can smash stuff with axes and swords and maybe do some cool cinematic moves at the same time. He's an astute critic of these games already, and he can tell you why he likes Gamma World better than 4th Edition (more creative potential, more absurdity) and he comes to any tabletop game with hundreds of hours of video game experiences and a preference for pixels over papers and pencils.

So we busted out the DnDNext playtest packet, on my iPad, with just a character sheet printed out for each of the two players. My son chose the Dwarf Fighter and my daughter chose the Halfling Rogue. No surprises there.

I went mini-less and battle-map-less, because if there's one thing that would emphasize that DnDNext is NOT a tweaked version of 4th Edition, it's the lack of map-centric powers and abilities. Sure, we could have used a map to show positions in combat, but it wasn't necessary -- a few quick lines on a piece of paper showed where everything was in relation to one another -- and the battle in the "theater of the mind" was just as much fun for the kids than anything they'd ever played in 4th Edition or Gamma World or Mutants & Masterminds.

But I'll get to that later.

Before we started on our way, with Bob the Dwarf and Lily the Halfling on their way to explore the Caves of Chaos, my son expressed hesitation about his underpowered character. 15 AC for a fighter??? No special moves??? He declared DnDNext a terrible game, even before we started marching the characters toward their cavernous doom.

My daughter didn't care either way, she just wanted to make sure her character was named after one of her friends at school.

On the way to the Caves, they chanced upon a couple of Bugbears gnawing on an animal carcass. Bob the Dwarf charged in, greataxe blazing. Lily the Halfling tried to climb a tree and leap down on them from above. She failed her first attempt, but chose to use another action to try again, figuring that leaping from above, even delayed a turn, was better than charging in with her tiny dagger.

They dispatched the Bugbears swiftly, with Bob improvising a move to smash one of the monsters into the other, knocking down his foul compatriot, and Lily dropping down to stab the fallen Bugbear in the eye. Vicious little kids, desensitized to violence, what has this country come to, etc, etc, it was awesome.

My son's negativity lingered, but once he got to the Caves of Chaos, everything would change and his grumpy playtesting approach turned to, "hey, this was a lot more fun than I expected."

Find out why next time.

TO BE CONTINUED!

Wednesdays: Come Out and Play

On Wednesdays, beginning on May 16th and running for the next three months, I will be running D&D Encounters at Fantasy Realms in Pittsfield, MA from 4:30-6:30 each week.

The May 16th session is for character creation, and each following week will feature a mini-installment (or encounter) of the "Web of the Spider Queen" adventure written by Logan Bonner.

The whole purpose of the D&D Encounters program is to bring in new players, and to have some regular fun for people who can come in for a week, but might miss other weeks, and everyone can still have a good time. If you don't create a character -- or bring a suitable character to play (email me for details) -- then you'll play one of the cool pre-gen characters provided by Wizards of the Coast.

Why am I running D&D Encounters locally? Well, I want to play it, and no one else is running it, so I might as well just take charge of the thing. And I've been running D&D games at home with friends and family for the past two years and a little bit after school this year, so I figured making it a formal weekly thing would be a good idea.

All my friends and family members and anyone else can swing by on Wednesday afternoons and play.

It's limited to 5 players per week, so contact me or Fantasy Realms to sign up for certain Wednesdays, and I will see you there!

Kickstarting the Image Revolution

Earlier tonight -- though I guess it would be earlier this morning by the time this is posted -- I put out a call for donations for Patrick Meaney's upcoming "Comics in Focus: The Image Revolution" documentary. I said I would match whatever donations were made within the hour, up to $500.

I was happy to do it. (As I write this now, and the clock is running down on the hour, it looks like I will end up matching $245 in donations.) Even though I have old ties with Sequart, the gang behind the documentary, and got my start in comics punditry writing for a now-defunct version of their website, I heard about the documentary the same time everyone else did when it was announced on Kickstarter (though maybe I guessed it a little earlier than most, with Mike Phillips's Andre Agassi references on Twitter, and my ability to plumb the depths of Professor Phillips's subtle mind.)

Because I know Patrick, and I was a talking head in the Grant Morrison documentary, I will likely get a chance to provide some historical context on camera for the Image doc. But that's not why I donated money to help fund the project.

I also find myself increasingly fascinated with Image Comics, and early Image comic books specifically. My interest in that era predates the current retro-enthusiasm generated by the excellent work guys like Joe Keatinge and Ross Campbell and Brandon Graham and Friends are doing on the relaunched Extreme titles. Basically, as corporate comics become more obviously manufactured products pumped out into the marketplace, it's fun to go back and look at the early Image books and see a bunch of young guys making marks on paper and churning out things to entertain themselves and their fans.

Many of the early Image comics aren't good by what I used to call my objective standards of comics criticism. But I'm less and less interested in that -- pulling myself away from doing traditional reviews has been healthy in that regard -- and more and more interested in seeing weird images and offbeat narrative choices that may not even be in the best interest of the stories being told. The imperfections, writ large, are endearing. I genuinely love them. And the fact that the Image founders shook up the industry, that's a monumental event. But that's not why I donated money to help fund the project.

I donated money to help fund the project because I know how Patrick and the guys at Sequart operate. I know Julian Darius and Mike Phillips (and friends) have constantly invested their own money into projects, before even asking for a penny from anyone else. I know for a fact that I was paid royalties on my books before those guys even made any kind of reasonable profit from the sales. They reinvested whatever money came out of those early book projects to fund other books, and, later, movies, that had no real shot of making any kind of money. They did it to get more people involved. To grow the brand, not to become rich, but because they wanted more people to say and write and direct cool, interesting things about comic books.

So, know this, if you're ever faced with donating to help a Sequart or a Patrick Meaney project: the money goes right into helping make the project happen, along with whatever personal money everyone involved can scrape together. And they will do right by you, because that's just how those guys are.

And with your help, with all of our help, they can keep producing interesting books and films and websites and whatever else they think we might like to see. And they will do it because they love it.

The Image Comics documentary Kickstarter ends in a few days. Donate if you have the chance. If not, keep your eyes peeled for whatever they have coming up next. It will be worth your time, for sure.

Jonathan Hickman = Jared Harris

Not the 1998 Film

I was flipping through the channels yesterday and I caught a minute of the 1998 Matt LeBlanc vehicle better known to cinephiles everywhere as Lost in Space. When I saw Jared Harris on screen, everything clicked into place (I actually saw the entire movie in the theater when it came out, all those years ago, because time somehow moved slower back then): Jonathan Hickman's Fantastic Four run is entirely based on the 1998 Lost in Space film.

Jared Harris plays what amounts to a time-travelling future Franklin Richards.

Cracked the code. Your move, Hickman.

Tucker Stone Destroys for Fun and Profit

If Tucker Stone only wrote his hilariously scathing reviews on a chalkboard outside of Bergen Street Comics, I would be sure to make extra trips to Brooklyn just to enjoy his prose. I have obsessively clicked on The Factual Opinion some late Sunday nights, when I'm working on some column for a deadline, hoping that his "Comics of the Weak" would miraculously update, even though  half of the comics he writes about so savagely are ones that I regularly enjoy with unrestrained enthusiasm.

But somehow, shifting his weekly take-down of "mainstream" comics to The Comics Journal site has added a weird new dimension to his words. Because now, though his tone is exactly the same as it has been for years, his biting mini-reviews have the weight of authority behind them.

Coming as a weekly (or less-than-weekly, more recently) blog post on his own faux-haughty Factual Opinion site, Tucker's snarky vitriol seemed like harmless but gut-punchingly entertaining pub talk. The sort of ultimate example of how we might all like to rant about the terribleness inside the comics that we find ourselves reading. And if you've been following Tucker's writing over the years, it's seemed that some of his exaggeratedly vicious criticism has become less and less of a pose and more and more of an acceptance that, yeah, these comics are pretty much as bad as he's been saying. At least, that's what seems to be reflected from his point of view. Increasing disillusionment from a source that was barely illusioned to begin with.

The comments, though -- and I should know not to read comments ever, sure, yes, I know -- on his second-and-most-recent TCJ column. His newly-relocated "Comics of the Weak." These comments remind me that because The Comics Journal barely covers front-half-of-Diamond-Previews comics, Tucker's words are not only seen as authoritative about the individual comics he writes about, but they're also seen as representative of an entire massive subsection of comics. Tucker indicts all of "mainstream" comics by ridiculing his particular selections on a weekly basis, to an audience that seems reassured in its bias.

"Aha!" they shout. "We knew those COMIC BOOKS were unreadable all along. Why, we gave them up years ago to focus on archiving our Ernie Bushmiller collections and waiting for the new Alison Bechdel. Thank you, Tucker Stone, for reminding us that we no longer have to waste our time on nonsense."

It reminds me of the "Little Cinema" in the lower level of the small museum here in my town. My wife and I used to go there to see independent and art house films every month or two. And the place would always be packed with retired folks, and they would laugh at all the wrong parts of every movie and applaud at the end of everything, seeming to miss the point of what they saw but yet clearly entertained by every moment. They would, haltingly, scoff at any mention of the big summer blockbuster playing at the multiplex.

I think of that crowd when I read some of the comments underneath Tucker's new column. And I think of these shambling septuagenarians (or worse, their snarling adolescent nihilist pals) interpreting a few funny, too-true reviews as some kind of blanket criticism of everything that comes out of Marvel and DC and IDW and Boom and whoever else publishes comic books that have action and punching and explosions and important conversations about whether society hates the protagonists or fears them. And I think of those readers feeling safe in their choice of sticking with The Collected Nancy Artist's Edition and I hate them in their narrowmindedness.

Then I turn and begin to celebrate all the variety and genre-smashing comics that those readers might be missing if they let Tucker turn them away from everything that the "mainstream" comic book publishers have to offer.

But, sadly, I can't even muster the energy to do that. I can't advocate for Justice League International or Dominique Laveau or X-Factor or Peter Panzerfaust or even the comics I like. I like them, these days, the way I like Chocolate-covered Peeps and the doodles of Inspector Gadget in the corners of my notes for work. But I don't advocate for them, necessarily.

Tucker may be right after all, even if he doesn't mean it. (Though he totally does.) And I'll be obsessively clicking on TCJ.com, waiting for more.

I Watched This Thing Called "Game of Thrones"

Boromir is Very Sad

The place where I buy my comics is called "Fautasy Realms," according to the sign. That's no typo -- that's just an upside down, dot-matrix-printed "n" in the store name, officially.

Back when Fautasy Realms was called "Virtual Reality," the owner talked about George R. R. Martin a lot, specifically about the sense of realism in his "Song of Ice and Fire" series. That didn't make me want to read the books.

A few years ago, when rumors of an HBO "Game of Thrones" project started bubbling up, and everyone freaked out about how amazing such a thing would be, I looked into the books a bit, and then realized that George R. R. Martin was the same guy who wrote that thing in "Wild Cards" about the superhero who was also a Volkswagen Beetle or something. So I stopped looking into the books.

Then, a bit before "Game of Thrones" actually premiered on HBO, I heard Sam Humphries, who I respect greatly for his wit and wisdom (long before he was a superfamous Marvel Comics Writer Extraordinaire), say that he loved the "Song of Ice and Fire" series even though he HATES ALL THINGS WITH ELVES AND SWORDS AND WIZARDS. So I bought "Game of Thrones."

I don't have HBO.

I tried to read "Game of Thrones" on a family cruise last summer, but I couldn't remember (or care to remember) all the characters in the opening 50 pages and I decided to read every New Mutants comic instead. I think I made the right choice.

I tried reading "Game of Thrones" again over the winter, and I got 150 pages into it, and I liked that Tyrion guy well enough but, let's be honest...it's a sleazy book, isn't it? Super sleazy, with incest and underage barbarian marriage-rape and mostly just a lot of pages that are like all the boring bits of "Lord of the Rings" without all the monsters and wizards and fancy obsession with British cuisine and pipe smoking. Also, it was just about the most plodding mystery story ever. Starring a guy named Ned.

I finally watched "Game of Thrones" last week. The whole first season.

Halfway through, I still thought it was sleazy and dull and yet the performances were strong enough to keep me watching and it looked nice all wintry and fur-lined and swordy.

But by the end, I wanted to know what happens next.

So I bought "A Clash of Kings." I have read the first two chapters. I think maybe I should go read all the "Youngblood" comics instead.

Though Boromir was pretty good in all those TV episodes. Too bad how it turned out for him. He'd make a good Chapel in the big-budget Youngblood movie. Boromir for Chapel. 2012!

Sean Witzke says it better than I ever could: Jean Giraud/Moebius 1938-2012.

Best Comics of 2011

Hey, I never posted the Best Comics of 2011 here at this still-not-abandoned blog. So here it is, for the ages.

I spent two weeks of "When Words Collide" over at Comic Book Resources running down my Top 30 list, so if you want the capsule explanations and/or justifications for the entire List o' Thirty for Twenty-Eleven, that's the place to go. First go to BEST COMICS OF 2011: THE RUNNERS UP then finish strong with THE TOP TEN COMICS OF 2011.

Here's the list, unadorned with comment:

10. Batman, Inc.
9. Lose
8. Xombi
7. Forming
6. Loose Ends
5. Deadpool MAX
4. Butcher Baker, The Righteous Maker
3. Casanova: Avaritia
2. Flashpoint: Batman: Knight of Vengeance
1. Scalped

A solid list, I think, even though it feels like a million years ago.

The Annotated Chemical Box UPDATED

I recently appeared as a guest on The Chemical Box podcast to talk about comics and movies and writing about comics and not having time to watch movies.

[NOTE: THE PODCAST IS NOW POSTED! GO, LISTEN!]

These are the Top 10 Annotations for the episode.

1. The Golden Age spaceman comics of Basil Wolverton are good.

2. This guy doesn't like Rob Liefeld much, but he's dead wrong and you can tell just by looking at the sweet art he uses as examples. Also: Rob Liefeld drew THIS kernel of greatness.

3. Alec likes Savage Dragon comics a lot, especially this one but also all these ones.

4. Joey likes Suburbia, mostly because it was written by this guy, but also because it was directed by this guy, and stars this other guy. Tim agrees.

5. Mark Bagley used to be good. Oh wait, no he didn't.

6. We didn't talk about this movie at all.

7. Abhay didn't like this comic very much, and we wondered why the men-in-suits-shuffling-paperwork genre was popular with podcasters with bad taste.

8. Michael Deforge wrote and drew this just so Joey would have something to do for a month.

9. This is definitely NOT the best comic ever. But THIS may be!

10. There exists a demarcation in the world. On the one side, those who think they like movies but are actually quite ignorant and possibly evil. On the other side, those who actually like movies and have immense knowledge and insight. You can tell you're talking to someone in the former category because they continue to insist that this is a good movie, even though everyone else in the world knows they are wrong. I mean, yeesh!

Splash Page Holiday Special! Go. Listen.

Chad Nevett and I return -- one last time (unless we decide to do it again someday) -- to the podcast that made our fame and fortune around the world.

THE SPLASH PAGE PODCAST!

In this special, LONG, holiday edition, we talk about our Best of 2011 lists, where the layer of escapism actually appears in our comics reading, and why this is such a banner year for Joe Casey comics.

Chad makes some kind of appeal on behalf of Jonathan Hickman's "Ultimates" comics, but while he was talking about that stuff, I was thinking about how pretty Javier Opena's work on "Uncanny X-Force" has been.

Anyway, we're glad to be back, even if it's just for this special edition, so go on over there and spend two-and-a-half hours of your life listening to two guys talk about something they love. And comics too!

Reader's Guide to the New DC Universe

I've been working on this all summer, over at Tor.com, but I've neglected to mention it here on the blog. Please forgive me for the oversight.

Basically, it's my 800 words on each and every new DC title launching in September, based on the interviews and solicitations and the previous work of the creative team(s). All 52 of them. Plus an overview about the whole thing and the digital distribution angle. It's the most comprehensive look at the DC relaunch that you're likely to see, because I was crazy enough to write about all of these series with so many damned words.

I'll probably end up being right about 85% of it all, too. Enjoy!

READ: TOR.COM READER'S GUIDE TO THE NEW DC UNIVERSE, by me!

Blackhawk at Tor.com

Tor asked me to write a piece on the history of Quality and DC's "Blackhawk" series, since it is one of the lesser-known properties to join the relaunch this fall.

I mean, we all know who Blackhawk is, but the average Tor.com reader might not be familiar with some of the character's greatest hits, and it's not like Absolute Blackhawk is on the reprint schedule anytime soon. Though I would buy it, of course, assuming it reprinted either (a) the swinging 60's superhero years, (b) the Evanier/Spiegle run, or (c) Chaykin's three-parter, which was THE FIRST HOWARD CHAYKIN COMIC I EVER READ AND THAT WOULD PROBABLY EXPLAIN A LOT ABOUT ME.

Anyway, my history of Blackhawk turned into a piece about Blackhawk throughout the ages and, oh yeah, Will Eisner is racist. I didn't intend to go there, but as I read the DC Archives edition of the first "Blackhawk" stories, I just couldn't give Eisner a pass. He sometimes gets a pass for Ebony White, but Ebony White PLUS Chop-Chop? A pattern of foul racism derailed my "Blackhawk" retrospective a bit.

Still, I marched on. Go READ: Such a Man is Blackhawk.

The DC Relaunch and Reasonable Readers of all Types

I wrote this week's piece for Tor.com mostly because Ron Marz and a random fan were debating how much to freak out about DC's relaunch. The fan (or fans -- maybe it was more than one) seemed to think everything in the past would cease to exist, and all his DC comics would be meaningless now. Marz didn't agree. At all.

Of course, now we know that Marz is part of the DC relaunch (which I'm happy about, because he's a good guy and a hard-working writer), but I don't think that's really all that significant in the debate. What's important is...the two fundamentally different way people read comics. And that's what I wrote about.

Go, read: "What Does it Matter? Stories and Comic Book Readers" at Tor.com.

BLASTOFF: I Write for Tor.com Now

Hey, you know Tor Books, the imprint (now) of Macmillan, and publisher of authors such as Larry Niven, George R. R. Martin, and Robert Jordan?

I am now the weekly comics blogger for their website.

If you haven't been following the goings-on at Tor.com, and I'll be honest and admit that I only started checking it out when they contacted me about working for them, then you probably don't realize that they have a Nebula award-winning original fiction component AND a vigorous blog, covering a wide variety of geek culture topics like books and movies and, yes, comic books. I didn't realize any of this until they reached out to me, but, man, it's a damn good site, and I'm not just saying that just because they wanted to hire me.

(Would I have taken the gig if it was a crappy site? Maybe, maybe not. But I sure wouldn't have bragged about how good the site was!)

So go check out Tor.com, and read my first weekly post (which actually debuted a few days ago, but I'm just getting around to telling you about it): Xombi -- Monster Hunters and Mysteries.

I wrote it a week before the DC relaunch announcement, and I have no idea how "Xombi" will fare in the 52-ongoings version of the DCU, but enjoy that comic while it lasts!

And between Tor.com, Comic Book Resources, and Marvel.com, (and this very blog you are now reading!), I will be all over the internet this summer, with or without a podcast.