Soul Calibur V

The Legacy of the Redundant Soul

I so desperately wanted to fall in love with SOUL CALIBUR V, much the way I had with the original Soul Edge/Soul Blade for the PlayStation, and its sequel, Soul Calibur, for the Sega Dreamcast.  Since those two games, the series has been wrought with unsatisfying experience after unsatisfying experience -- all of which seem to be lesser versions of the one before it.  Soul Calibur V is really no different.

When I first popped the game in after it being delivered to my door step, I was met with the sensation of disappointment once again -- the same disappointment I felt with Soul Calibur II and III, but not quite as bad as what I felt with IV.  Soul Calibur II's gameplay felt lessened, to me, than it's predecessor and had a lot less features.  Soul Calibur III had the creation mode for the first time in any fighting game, but it was limited and not very well structured, and it, too, seemed to have less offerings than its previous installment.  VI suffered from the same creation mode issues, lacked in all the extra modes I had becomes accustomed to with Soul Blade and Soul Calibur, but offered Darth Vader, Yoda, and Starkiller as extra characters.  It seems that as the series progresses, the focus is put more on what guest characters they can stick into the game rather than making the new experience better than the last.

With Soul Calibur V we once again have solid gameplay that is accompanied by a solid online mode, but we have a neutered single player experience that's limited to a very shoddy story mode, the regular arcade mode that goes into fighting games but restricted to just six opponents, and a mode that was borrowed somewhat from Tekken; particularly the handheld versions of Tekken on the PSP.  There's no survival mode, no sort of challenge tower, no mode that guides you through the gameplay process as before; there's no depthy story mode or pseudo RPG mode, no character viewers or background viewers; there's not even any sort of storyline components for the characters that we've all grown to love and appreciate.  Nope, no CGI endings, no couple of illustrations accompanied by some text endings, there's no story elements for any of the characters outside of the story mode and it just covers the new characters.

Visually, the game is very pretty, but to me, aside from some changes to how the game plays, it's no different at all from the previous game.  In fact, it feels like such a lesser version of Soul Calibur IV, that aside from unlocking the creation parts, there's almost no incentive to actually play this game at all over the previous one.  Yeah, it has Ezio from Assassin's Creed, but if I want to play a game for that specific character, I'm going to play Assassin's Creed.

Soul Calibur V is redundant, and it makes me feel that Team Soul -- along with a few other Japanese game developers -- have no idea what they're audience expects from them, and assume they can just do what Activision is doing with Call of Duty, except fighting games are not Call of Duty.  You can't really build a robust online component to a game that's basically a fight between two digital characters.  You can make it work, you can make it work really well, or you can make it fail horribly.  While Soul Calibur V does work online really well, some of us who play these types of games, don't care at all to play them online.  Yet, most of the devs and publishers that make fighting games from Japan assume that that's what they're entire audience wants from them now, and so the past decade and a half of all this expansive single player content is being done away with so that you and your friends can collect emblems, titles, and tags online.

All the while redundantly unlocking items to make up a new fighter with that are just the same items and materials from the previous game.  Yes, you have to spend an absurd amount of time playing Soul Calibur V to unlock the same equipment that you spent an absurd amount of time playing Soul Calibur IV unlocking.  It was upon that point, after reaching almost level fifty of in the game, that I realized that there's no real point in playing Soul Calibur V.  Even within the creation mode, it's still just as restrictive as it's always been with the only new addition to it being the adjusting of the characters size.  You still can only make clones of the fighters offered -- which makes for some hilarious moments, actually, when you make a male character in a woman's fighting style, and he stands and runs and behaves in the game like one of the females.  They didn't go all out, which is a huge disappointment when you learn that around four-hundred individuals worked on this game.  It was rushed, it feels rushed; and it's very sad to see a game that used to offer a slew of unique experiences within the fighting game genre has been robbed of all of that.  I would've liked to have seen maybe ten different fighting styles that were exclusive to the creation characters instead of just making fifty clones of Mitsurugi.

The end results have soured me on Soul Calibur completely and worries me about Namco's future fighting game endeavors, such as TEKKEN TAG TOURNAMENT 2.  I still have hope, 'cause I was very disappointed with Soul Calibur IV as well, and Tekken 6 served up a great fighting game for me.

X THE LINE.

The Death of Darth Vega

            As the Shadowlaw coasted in its orbit around Coruscant, the Sith Lord gazed out from the wide window of his quarters across the vast darkness of the galaxy.  The tiny pinpricks of stars and the planet systems that populated them all brought a sinister smile to his face; for the plans had been set in motion for centuries and soon -- so very, very soon -- all of it would belong to him.  Nothing would stand in his way; nothing could stand in his way.  Not the Galactic Empire, not his ignorant rival, Darth Vader; not even the Emperor himself.  The Emperor: a guise that the entire galaxy bought into.  Darth Sidious had conjured an amazing trick, but to rule the galaxy would require far more force than the mere existence of dual personalities.  Vega had foreseen multiple outcomes of Sidious’ rise to power; all of them ended in his death.  The most prominent of these visions were his end at the hands of the Skywalkers.  But Vega was impatient and to wait several more decades for Skywalker the Lesser to grow into his role as the Last of the Jedi would be to leave his goals in the hands of abstract ideas such as fate and destiny.  Vega’s fate and destiny were of his own design; meticulously plotted and calculated like a sculptor that etched his finest work out of stone.  Even the arrival of Vader’s secret apprentice had been weaved into Vega’s elaborate tapestry.  No, not even Darth Sidious himself could stand in Vega’s way of Galactic Conquest.

Starkiller arrived on the Shadowlaw with an impact that rocked the massive vessel.  Once inside, he navigated through the ship with the greatest of ease thanks to schematics provided by Proxy pre-op.  The opposition he faced within the confines of the ship went down just as easily, his green hued lightsaber sliced through flesh and droid alike.  Not even a blaster bolt touched him or singed the fabric of his tattered suit.  Unbeknownst to him, Darth Vega had rendered his defense droids moot and had plagued his private soldiers with an acute case of exhaustion: a loss to the Sith Lord, but a necessary one.

            Starkiller unleashed a spherical concentration of kinetic force at the sealed durasteel blast doors that could only belong to the quarters of the Jedi he had been assigned to kill.  His Master had given him explicit instructions of not leaving anything to chance; that this Jedi must not survive under any circumstances.  The impact of his hidden projectile bent the doors at the center and unhinged one from their collective frame.  Inside he could see the Jedi clearly: he stood facing a massive window with his back towards Starkiller.  He wore a black cloak secured at the shoulders by two guards, and a bright red cap atop his head that suggested a militant order about him.  When he spun around to greet Starkiller, his appearance sent a shock wave through the Force that rocked every nerve ending in Starkiller’s body.  It wasn’t the vibrant, red uniform that he wore, or the metallic wrist guards that adorned it; nor was it the winged skull on the face of his cap – the same symbol that Starkiller had seen on the hull of the ship—or the pure whiteness of his eyes that felt absent of all life and consciousness.  It was the smile that split the man’s face into two separate halves and the teeth that showed behind his lips.  It was vile, sinister; the smile not of a Jedi, but of something dark and evil.  And though he had never met Darth Sidious and had never witnessed his Master’s masked face bare a smile, Starkiller knew that the smile belonged to a Sith Lord.

            “You’re no Jedi,” Starkiller stated bluntly.

            “Nor are you,” the man said and then something inexplicable happened.

            The man no longer stood at the window behind an ornate desk.  He stood directly in front of Starkiller, a mere yard away.  In the cloud of chaotic confusion that clouded Starkiller’s mind, the questions of what just happened and how is that possible sparked like lightning before a storm.  Teleportation technology, although attempted, was impossible and certainly unfeasible for an organic being.  Yet, that’s what Starkiller had just witness, for no one – not Jedi nor Sith – could move so fast that without blinking, the young Sith apprentice could have not seen it.  In a manner of seconds all of these thoughts passed through Starkiller’s mind before his instincts took control of his body and ignited the youth’s lightsaber.  It sparked to life and filled the darkened room with a vibrant green ambiance.   He then struck out at the supposed Jedi with a similar technique he had used to enter the room.  The wave of Force energy pushed the man in red back to the window where he hit it with a thumping thud.  The window cracked and spider-webbed from the impact and Starkiller charged.  He beckoned the Force to assist his movement and was upon the man in a single leap and his saber fell fast to split the man in half.

            Yet it didn’t.

            The green blade of his saber was held at bay mere inches from the man’s face by a lightsaber of his own.  One that defied everything that Starkiller knew about the weapons and further defied everything he knew about the inner workings of the universe itself.  Its blade was a void; devoid of all light, yet emitted an eerie, violet glow that clashed against the green glow of his own weapon and illuminated those vacant, dead eyes of his opponent.

            Starkiller leapt backwards, his mind full of questions, and watched the man in red rise to his feet.  The stillness in the air between the two provided Starkiller with the opportunity to reach out into the Force for some kindle that would ignite the fire of understanding his conscious mind had denied him.  He found nothing.  No, less than nothing.  An entity of negative space: a void of an unnatural manipulation of the Force itself; a hole torn into the fabric of reality.  Whomever – whatever – this man was, he simply shouldn’t have been; his very existence an impossibility.

            Once to his feet, the man in red tore the black cloak free and tossed it away.  His saber, that dark horrible thing, ignited again and he launched himself at Starkiller: the duel had become official.

Darth Vega toyed with the apprentice of his rival for the better part of an hour.  He dodged and parried; deflected and countered as the deadly dance of the duel progressed.  His intentions were never to kill the apprentice, but to challenge him in a manner that even Vader couldn’t imagine.  To increase the emotional charge of the duel for the apprentice he even allowed the youth to land several strikes against the armor on his shins, forearms and shoulders.  The armor had been molded from an ore that, once solidified from its liquid state, became near indestructible.  Thus the apprentice’s saber did no damage and left no marks.  Then, it seemed, that the music had ended and the dance was over.  It was time for Darth Vega to end this charade.

The duel had exhausted Starkiller.  His muscles and joints ached and it seemed as though the Force itself had ceased to provide him with any sort of support.  This man, whatever he was, was far more powerful than the two Jedi he had previously faced and defeated and the void-like aura that surrounded this being told him that the man even surpassed his Master in sheer power.  Perhaps even the Emperor himself.

            His lightsaber had grown too heavy to wield with one hand, as his preferred style required of him.  He took a traditional two handed stance for his next flurry of attacks.  All of which he thought to be futile – and proved to be – as he felt death as it crept closer and closer still as time passed on.  The duel’s conclusion approached fast and surely his opponent knew it as well. Him with the vile weapon; him with the vile smile; him with the veil of mystery that seemed to bastardize all in existence.

            Still, better to die at the hands of the enemy than to return to his Master in shame.

            Then it happened.

            The man in red spun around violently, his dark saber making a grand arc through the air, and left himself open.  In less time than it took for him to blink, Starkiller flipped the saber in the palm of his hand to his preferred style and jammed the blade into the man in red’s chest to the hilt before the man’s own foul weapon finished its path.  The intense heat of Starkiller’s green blade cauterized the wound and let no blood flow freely.  The opponent dropped his weapon, which went dead as soon as it hit the floor, and fell to his knees.  Starkiller waited until all traces of life left the man in red’s face before he withdrew his weapon.  From the hole in the man’s chest erupted an ethereal violet flame that consumed the entirety of him and left a pile of ash and burning hot metal in his place.  When Starkiller touched the black lightsaber, it, too, was reduced to ash.

            He stopped and stared in amazement with thoughts roaring in his head.  Perhaps this whole ordeal had been nothing more than a figment of his imagination.  Or perhaps it was an ancient trial concocted by the Sith and implored upon him by the Dark Lord that was his Master.  He accepted that and agreed with himself with a silent nod that this was merely another test that Darth Vader had set upon him.  It was the most logically satisfying resolution to the problem, the mystery, that his mind could conjure up.

            He deactivated his weapon and set out to finish the task at hand.

            “What happened in there?” Juno Eclipse asked when he returned to his own ship, the Rogue Shadow.

            “I…” Starkiller paused, his thoughts were blank on the subject.  “I don’t remember.  I remember boarding the ship and now this.  Everything is a blank.”

            Juno stared at him.  Her eyes and the expression on her face told him everything he would want to know.

            “I’m not crazy,” he said.  He dismissed any further conversation and went to Proxy.  “Detonate it.”

            The Shadowlaw erupted in a burst of immense flames then went black in the vacuum of space as Juno pulled the Rogue Shadow away.  It was true, what he told his pilot.  There was a hole in his memory between the time he entered the Shadowlaw and when he departed.  All that remained in his mind’s eye of the event was the image of a terrible smile.

52 Flavors: DC's New 52 Week 1 and 2 (Part 3)

Flavor # 7:

Justice League International

This one is a tough read, even for a superhero comic veteran such as myself.  After being spoiled by some superhero comics at the turn of the century (The Authority, Stormwatch, Wildcats 3.0, among others) reading old-school-ish superhero comics is very hard for me to do.  Comics that don't push the superhero narrative in its various forms and functions into new levels.  I had to stop reading this comic, find the credits screen and learn who wrote it.  Upon that information, I wasn't surprised.  Dan Jurgens.

Most of you know who Dan Jurgens is without knowing his name.  In the mid-1990s, DC Comics did a MASSIVE COMIC BOOK EVENT THING regarding the Death of Superman.  You remember it, don't you?  I was there, Superman was there, Doomsday was there... Dan Jurgens wrote that comic, I do believe, and drew it, too.  Wikipedia says I'm correct in that belief.  I'm not a big fan of Dan Jurgens, but not because of the Death of Superman storyline EVENT THING, but because he was the guy on writing duties for a horrible comic called "Supmerman/Aliens."  Y'know, the H.R. Giger designed monsters that gestate inside you, then erupt violently from your chest like a maniacal birthing sequence that had two really great films under the directive fingertips of Ridley Scott and James Cameron.  Yeah, those.  It's a superhero comic book oddity, the crossover thing -- although it didn't begin with superheroes, nor is it limited to superheroes.

Continuing: The book begins like something ripped out of WildStorm Production's past with the United Nations piecing together a superhero team of their own.  I'm supposing these guys are getting paid for their heroics, like the original Stormwatch, while everyone else does it for the GREATER GOOD.  Like the old folks from HOT FUZZ.  The book loses me when Batman shows up, after the team is assembled, and basic superheroic stuff goes on.  Y'know, fighting big monsters and such.  It's not the kind of superhero comics I like to read unless it's being done in a manner that blows my brain apart and then reassembles it from scratch.  This is the first comic that hits the definite removal from my brain like a cancerous tumor pile.

Flavor # 8

Animal Man

I'm not too familiar with the character of Animal Man.  I know that Grant Morrison wrote him in the 1990s at one point, and did something pretty interesting with the character, but I've yet to read those comics.  Animal Man is a guy that can tap into a THING which has a name, but I'm forgetting it, and he can take his superpowers from animals attached to that THING.  It's kind of a quirky little skill that could make for some humorous situations and doesn't seem like it would be all that interesting to read about.

But the catch is, Animal Man doesn't really play into the costumed heroics that other superheroes play into all that much.  There's one instance in this first issue where he kind of does, but it's very different.  Animal Man is an animal rights activist instead of the costumed vigilante thing, he's also married with two kids, and is having an independent film made about him, which makes for some very interesting drama in the book.

And it's good.  Did I mention that, yet?  No, well there it is!  Animal Man # 1 is really good.  There seems to be a minor section of the New 52 that read more maturely than the rest of the line does, and it seems that they're still closely tied to the incarnations of the books that were published through DC's mature readers/creator owned label, VERTIGO.  Animal Man is one of them, Swamp Thing is another.  These are the kind of superhero-like comics that one could read if they cannot man up to their juvenile fascinations with Godfigures and Heroes (like the Greek Age) and are embarrassed by reading comics with bright colors, funny costumes, and crazy situations.  Of course, I'm not one of those people, but YOU MIGHT BE.  This is a comic for you.  Animal Man gets into the dark and twisted sort of superhero storytelling techniques towards the end of the book that give it a very ominous tone.  It's a fantastic read that comes highly recommended from me.

Flavor # 9:

Green Arrow

This is another comic that just isn't for me.  Oliver Queen is a rich character in the name of a Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark, that dresses up like a modern day Robin Hood, equipped with techno-gadgetry in the tips of his arrows to fight crime in his spare time.  My only familiarity with the Green Arrow character comes from a brief appearance in Frank Miller's THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, and  in that book he was a bit different than what I'm reading here.

This one gets the ax from me just like Justice League International does.  Uninteresting, bland superheroics that don't differentiate itself well enough from the comics of the past that were just as bland and uninteresting to get new people excited or interested in what's going on.  Less drama, too much over the top comic book action with lots of talky-talky going on during.  Sometimes I wonder if some of these comic book writers have ever been in a fight.  When a fight is going down, there's no time for discussion.  Yet, regularly in comics, there's full on conversations going on while someone's getting kicked, punched, or shot through the hands with super-arrows.

Green Arrow is a dull arrow-tip launched at a new crowd from a limply crafted bow, entirely missing it's target.

Flavor # 10:

Hawk & Dove

This one is a weird one.  I'm only familiar with the Hawk and Dove characters because I know that's where Rob Liefeld got his start in comics a long time ago.  Before his Marvel work, before New Mutants and X-Force.  Before he stamped my brain with the images of Cable and Deadpool.  Before he, and several other popular artists, left Marvel Comics in search of greener pastures with their own creations and formed Image Comics.  Rob was just a penciller guy on a series called Hawk and Dove.  I never bothered reading it, 'cause it's taken me a very long time in nerd years to get over my nerd dislike for DC Comics' characters.

This one begins with some bland superheroics going on.  The Hawk and Dove characters are stopping a cargo plane filled with zombie-like monsters from crashing into the Washington Monument, an act of terrorism concocted by some deranged mad scientist character, then boils down into some basic drama type stuff that's actually pretty interesting.  The drama unfolds with the two characters discussing their partnership with other individuals.  Hawk's talking about his dad -- and we get a brief flashback of the origins of Hawk and Dove -- and Dove is talking to her boyfriend which happens to be Deadman.  What an odd person to be in a relationship with.  Over the span of the pages, we get some mysteries floating around that are interesting enough to come back for a second issue, that culminate in the arrival of a tan-and-brown costume wearing character that looks a little bit like Hawk who has some obviously bad intentions towards the heroes.

Be warned though, the book is pencilled by Rob Liefeld and if you've never been a fan of Liefeld's work, this probably won't get you started as one.  Me, I've always had a fondness for his anatomically incorrect, teeth-gritting comic art, so I'm perfectly fine with it.  You may not be however. The book is worth a look, though.

And that concludes part three.  It would've been up sooner had I actually written it last night, but I really could not pull myself away from reading a few trade paperbacks that I added to my library recently.  Alan Moore's Complete WildC.A.T.s, Wildcats Volume 4: Battery Park, Wildcats Version 3.0 Year One, and Wildcats Version 3.0 Year Two.  I was completely wrapped up in them that I forced myself to stay awake while I made it through the last volume.  More on those later, I imagine.

52 Flavors: DC's New 52 Week 1 and 2 (part 2)

Flavor # 3:

Detective Comics

Batman.  Can you believe I used to hate the Batman character?  When I was younger, really young actually, I associated all things Batman to that horrible television show starring Adam West and Burt Ward, so I never read the comics.  I carried this through life, even through Tim Burton's Batman film from 1989, until I finally read Frank Miller's THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS sometime in the early 1990s.  How things change!

Detective Comics is one of DC's flagship titles, mostly because of the title, I'm assuming.  DC Comics was named after Detective Comics way back in the day.  And I gotta get this outta my head first and foremost.  I wouldn't have relaunched this title as a Batman only title.  I would have done this, and Action Comics, as big black and white books like Shonen Jump that featured serial detective or action based stories featuring characters of those types.  Batman, the Question, and others for Detective, Superman, Lantern, and other lesser knowns for Action.

Anyway, the cover here is pretty morbid, and I like that.  I am a horror nut after all.  This would make a really awesome horror movie poster at the theatre.  It has Batman posing all menacingly over what very well could be the severed head of the Joker among severed doll heads.  Tony Daniel outdid himself with this cover.  And I haven't mentioned this yet, but DC's new trade dressing is pretty eye catching.

The book opens with a claustrophobic action sequence done in lone, vertical panels that messes with your brain a bit, covered with some thought-boxes from the Bat himself.  The Joker is in a fray with some unknown assailant then moves to a shot of Batman somewhere atop the massive buildings of Gotham City.  It's a very nice opening sequence, I think, 'cause it prepares you for the rest of the book.  The claustrophobic play with the panels and the heavily detailed environments of Gotham City.  The City, I think, is just as much of a character in Batman's world as Batman himself.    Over the course of the twenty or so pages we're given the opening stages of a mystery, which suits the title well.  From previous readings of the former Detective Comics title, I never understood why there were less detective stories going on in that book than straight out Batman slugfests.  And this book is well suited for people who are familiar with other representations of the Batman character, specifically the Christopher Nolan films.  It jumps head first into a mystery featuring the Joker and is done in a very plausible atmosphere.  The Batman story being told here is almost a universe away from what's being told in the Justice League books.  It's gritty, detective work that fits the Batman character and sets up his relationship with Comissioner Gordon and the rest of the Gotham City Police Department.  Another significant detail is during the fight sequence between Batman and the Joker towards the book's closing.  It shows that Batman is just a man and makes mistakes, which is very appreciated for reasons I can't rightly explain.  I like knowing Batman is just a man, not a super bat-god as some people are complaining that they've turned him into again.  The end of the book is such a gruesome shock that I had to re-read it multiple times on two different readings.  I loved it, again the horror fan rears his head, and I'm still very pleased with what I'm looking at.

The single image is so disturbing that it's almost frightening, and the dialogue that goes with it makes it so much more so.  I have no idea what Tony Daniel is planning with this story he's giving to me, but I'm going along with it to the end.  I wanna know.  And no, no spoilers.  You'll have to read it to see what happened, or go somewhere else.  I will say it's one of the most delightful illustrations of the grotesque I've seen since Hellraiser.

Flavor # 4:

Action Comics

I am not a Superman fan.  I never have been, but that's slowly changing, and most of that change is coming courtesy of Grant Morrison.  I had no expectations of this comic except that I was probably going to like it.  I'm a Grant Morrison mark -- or fan if you're not up to wrestling lingo -- and I'm not ashamed to say it.  Morrison's run on New X-Men is my favorite X-Men run ever, his work on All-Star Superman got me to really recognize what's wrong with the character (it isn't him at all, it's the people that write Superman stories) and The Invisibles is in my top five all time favorite comic books ever.

All that said, I did not expect to like this comic as much as I do.  It's simply fantastic.  The cover starts the book off with the tone and pace that it keeps throughout the twenty-something pages.  It depects a younger Superman wearing a blue t-shirt with the Superman S symbol on it, blue jeans and boots, with a much shorter cape than normal being chased by what could be a whole prescient of Metropolis' Police Department.  This is not the costumed Superman we've seen all our lives, this something different.  Something youthful, arrogant; something brash and temperamental; it's something fresh.

There's a second cover, too, which has nothing to do with the story inside, but it's pretty cool looking nevertheless.  It's a Jim Lee drawn cover that looks like it takes inspiration from the old Fleischer cartoons with Superman in his future costume.  And, y'know, I have to say that I really dig the new Superman costume.  I was never a fan of the original, even after I learned its inspirations.  A lot of older comic readers and fans call it things like "Iconic" and all that, but most people I know that don't read comics call it, "Stupid."  I tended to agree with them.  The S is iconic, 'cause, y'know, it's an icon, but the whole of the costume was absurd and outdated since 1940.  It was based on circus strongmen outfits of the 1930s, for Pete's sake, it has no relevancy past its use by date, and it never looked cool.  Jim Lee's redesign of the costume looks more like armor which implies that it has some significance beyond being a superhero costume.  It has more story to it, and, well, I think it looks hella cool.

Anyway, as I said, this is a fresher, younger Superman.  The story, as I understand it, takes place a while before the Justice League story which took place five years ago.  Maybe a few months or so before then.  Superman, or Clark Kent, has only arrived in Metropolis six months before that, so we're getting a look at a Superman just starting out, and he's a far cry from the Boy Scout image that everyone associates with Superman in my non-comic reading circles, or my Marvel only reading circles.  This Superman is brash, and he's ballsy.  If I'm guessing right, Morrison is basing the new Superman on the Old Superman, the original Superman from the late 1930s where didn't go after small time criminals -- like in Superman the Movie's beginning -- and went after something much bigger.  In the opening sequence here, he's going after Mr. Glenmorgan, a corrupt CEO of sorts who's responsible for much more heinous crimes that cat-burglary.    Morrison and Rags Morales paint a really awesome picture that is almost complete -- too complete for a first issue to be believed -- not only of this younger Superman who cannot fly yet, cannot throw planets around, cannot do everything we've learned he can do in the past twenty years since his last reboot, but of Clark Kent, Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane, the Daily Planet, Metropolis and Lex Luthor.

This is by far my favorite of the New 52 so far, and I recommend it to everyone.  Especially people that hate Superman.

Flavor # 5:

Swamp Thing

This is almost like the mystery meat in a straight on superhero sandwich.  It was totally unexpected, probably completely overlooked, and one-hundred percent worth your time.  It's also where the idea of a reboot-slash-relaunch becomes very fuzzy.  I knew some things were going to be carried over yet not entirely sure what, here it's almost implied that everything Swamp Thing has experienced has.  At least to some extent.

But let's start with the cover!  It's beautiful!  Yanick Paquette delivers a cover that's rich in detail from cover to bottom and lets you know from the beginning that this isn't a superhero story told in the traditional sense, if at all.  I'm no foreigner when it comes to Swamp Thing.  Before I knew he was a comic book character, I was a big fan of the horribly made movie from the 1980s.  When you're a child, you're allowed to like really crappy forms of entertainment.  It's forgivable.  Later on in life, when DC republished them, I became very familiar with Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing.  I loved it because it was so non traditional superhero, yet almost superhero at the same time.  Several of the big names appeared in the book, but what it was about was so distant from the costumed heroics of Superman and Batman and there was this rough touch of horror icing the entire cake, that the end result was quite delicious.

This book, written by Scott Snyder and drawn by Yanick Paquette, seems to invoke some of that old Alan Moore Swamp Thing in it as it goes through it's pages.  It begins with a moment of horror, at least that's how I saw it, and we're off in running at a slow and deliberate pace.  Alec Holland is no longer Swamp Thing, he doubts he ever was, and is working construction instead of his biological science shit he used to do.  Sorry, my brain literally farted upon trying to think of what it was he used to do before the Swamp Thing gig.  The book is methodical compared to the other titles of the relaunch, which is very appreciated because it doesn't let the book let go of its roots in Vertigo.  It's still an alternative type comic that relies on horror type stuff to tell its stories, regardless of the brightly colored Superman appearing in a few issues.

The book is a delightful read, that's for sure, and it's quite mysterious and compelling.  This is a keeper for me.

Flavor # 6:

Batgirl

I really don't have much to say about Batgirl.  I know I should because it's really good, but other than that, I just don't KNOW what to say.

I love that it doesn't forget nor does it forgive.  This is Barbara Gordon as Batgirl.  Without trying to ruin anything for anyone, Barbara Gordon hasn't been Batgirl since the 1980s, after a crippling gunshot delivered to her by the Joker in Alan Moore's The Killing Joke.  She's served as Oracle, the eyes and ears of the digital age for Batman and all related Bat-books for the longest time.  Here she is, back on her feet, back in the costumed for good time romps, but the book hasn't forgotten.  The events that took away her legs are still fresh in her mind, they still happened, and even cause her to choke up towards the end of the book during its finale.  Gail Simone handles the subject matter with amazing skill and pulls off a book that's not only really well written, really well drawn, but is incredibly fun.

As I said, I don't have a lot to say about this comic other than I really did like it and enjoy it, and I feel bad for not being able to say more.  But it's one you should read.  You should definitely read Batgirl.  And keep reading it.

52 Flavors: DC's New 52 Week 1 and 2 (Part 1)

Welcome to the 21st Century!

It's eleven years late, but it's only now that I'm starting to feel the ripples of that time change.  The futuristic 21st Century arrived and I had virtually nothing to show for it.  No flying car, no time-travelling DeLoreon, no Virtual Reality; but eleven years later and I have a game system that blows my mind on a regular basis and delivers virtual realities I'm fond of visiting; I have super 1080p HD visuals that run at 120hz per second that emulates another form of virtual reality by playing tricks with my eyes -- I feel like I'm actually on the set more often than not -- and I have a cell phone that's one part Star Trek communication device and one part DO EVERYTHING.  While it won't give me medical readouts of people just by pointing it at them, it does allow me to watch movies (also in 1080p), read books, socialize on all sorts of networks, text, call, email... and read comics.

Yes, my definition of now living in the 21st Century is the ability to read comics on my phone and with the conception and birth of day-and-date releases, the 21st Century has come to life on my favorite hand held device in a way I never imagined.

I'm a 21st Century Comic Book Reader.

Done are the days of making weekly trips to the comic shops to get my fix.  Now I just tap the phone's screen a couple of times and the comics come to me!  No more straining myself to get a sold out issue, no more driving from the tip top of Northern Utah to the Southern most point of Salt Lake City to find a copy of Whatever Man # 182 with the SUPERAWESOMECOLLECTABLE cover.  No more let downs of not getting my favorite comic, no more disappointments.

Do I miss the comic shops?  Certainly.  But ever since the birth of the 21st Century I've had my own personal Crisis of Infinite Comic Shops where the evil villains overtook my time and replaced it with not-enough time.  I couldn't make it to the comic shops regularly because of these villains and even the superpowers of the Pull List Reserve System couldn't stop them.  I had deemed it a time to hang up the single issues and went trades only, it seemed the only way to stop them.  But now, the 21st Century has brought the comics to me, and the Crisis has been eliminated.  Permanently.

And it's great!  It brings a great amount of delight into my life, being able to get things delivered right to my phone.  Any time, anywhere, I can pick up the device, browse the comics and in a moment have it ready to read.  It comes in real handy at movie theaters while waiting for the room to go dark and the picture to begin.  Long trips or car rides, being somewhere I don't want to be; at any moment I can have a new comic, and that new comic will bring me joy -- whether it's bad or good.  And there are other delights, too!  One such delight of digital comics is storage.  No more long boxes, bags, boards, or single issues filling up the continuously shrinking space in the house I live in.  It's all stored for me in the magical nothingness of digital media.

Do not fret!  I'm not 100% pro-digital.  I'm very pro-trade paperback, and I buy them regularly.  By the metric shitton.  Preferably in hardcover.  Tomorrow, for instance, the Year Round Santa Clausmen (or UPS as most people call them) are bringing me three epic tomes of Comics Past that I've been eyeballing for a long time: The Complete Alan Moore WildC.A.T.s, Wildcats Version 3.0 Year One and 3.0 Year Two.  Excitement!

As a result of me being a 21st Century Comic Book Reader, I'm going to drop my thoughts on the first real experiment in 21st Century Comics: DC's New 52.  The set up is easy: DC's head honchos thought it was time to relaunch the entire line of their superhero comics.  They've called it a relaunch or a soft-reboot, essentially saying they're starting over from the beginning, but not really.  Only some of the books are effected by a complete overhaul, other's still remember things of years gone by.  But each of the New 52 Flavors of DC Comics has a different taste to me and I'm going to describe those tastes to you!

Don't you feel lucky?

Flavor # 1:

Justice League

I feel stupid about this comic.  I really do.  I've read this book three times now and the first two times I thought it was a really bad example of superhero comics.  Now, I have to publicly retract everything I've said about this comic because I obviously don't know how to read.  I stated that it felt like generic superheroics without any buildup to anything.  Well, this IS the buildup, apparently.  I missed a single caption in the comic twice over that change the overall dynamic of the story I was reading.  A single caption that read "FIVE YEARS AGO".  I really can't explain how that single caption changed the entire book for me, but it did!  And I feel like an ass about it.  A complete and total ass.

This is the set up of how the Justice League came together, and while it still does lack in some areas of world establishment and character buildup, the comic by itself doesn't really nearly as bad as I had earlier exclaimed.  Because of that one caption box.  The dialogues between Green Lantern and Batman were more interesting, and funny, and the entire premise became something a lot more tolerable.  While it definitely isn't one of the best superhero comics I've ever read, it's very well done for what it is.

I still think this comic would've been better read at the end of the relaunch.  Making it the 52nd instead of the first would've allowed everyone to relearn the DC Universe as it is currently being presented and better know the characters of Batman and Hal Jordan as the Green Lantern, as well as let us know full force why the Gotham City Police Department's Death Troops (I call them that because of the Death's Mask faceplates they wear that look like they just fell out of Modern Warfare 2O) are shooting at Batman.  But I do apologize for not taking my time with the book and reading it so quickly, then giving a false opinion of it.

But, in order to save nerdface, I have to say something negative about the book.  So, I'm targeting the secondary, variant cover drawn by Dave Finch.  Where Jim Lee's cover is a symbol of the second coming (of sorts) of DC's superheroes, Finch's is this really weird, darkly shaded cover that really makes no sense in the context of the stories being told.  Six of the seven members of the League are standing in front of the seventh member, Superman, who is flying above them I'm assuming, but he doesn't look like it.  All the characters have this dead-serious, menacing expression on their face that, when accompanied by the dark shading, make them look evil instead of the heroes we know them as.  Then there's Superman.  He looks, with his arms and fingers stretched out, like a deranged, maniacal puppeteer and the other six members look like his equally maniacal marionettes.  It's a very weird image, and a very horrible cover.  Yikes!

Flavor # 2

Stormwatch

I'm doing these in the order that I read them.  Just so you know.

I just read this comic a second time with a more open mind.  Shedding off the history of a comic I enjoyed as much as I did with Stormwatch and, eventually, the Authority is pretty hard.  You have to forget a lot of stuff and start over from scratch.  A lot of the things that were very intergral issues and components to characters is no longer there.  I'm reading these characters for the first time again.  Which both sucks and wasn't too bad.

I was meh when I first read it because of that detachment issue.  But after just reading it a second time, it's really not that bad at all.  There are some moments that are hard to wrap my head around.  The Engineer is one of them.  They just show her, they don't really get into who she is at all.  Hawksmoor is another -- who looks goofy as shit in this comic -- who kind of explains his powers, but not the trauma he went through to get them.  There's the Century Babies that makes no sense whatsoever if you've never read the previous Stormwatch comics, or the Authority, or Planetary.  And then there's Apollo and the Midnighter.  Both are represented here in a good way, they're not negative depictions of the characters.  My issue is that there there to begin with, only because the characters of the previous works went through HELL.  Without that HELL, brought upon them by Henry Bendix, it makes the new versions of them completely new and almost mysterious.  I don't know if I'm comfortable with it, quite yet.

The premise is a bit of a mix between the old Ellis Stormwatch, the old Ellis Authority, and the early WildC.A.T.s comics. Stormwatch is a secret team of superfolks that's been fighting off aliens on this planet for centuries.  There's a brief history run down of that stuff and there's a few glimpses of the Demon and some other characters that hints at a much longer, and stranger (a tip of the hat to Planetary, maybe?) history than the five year one that DC's giving us now.

Second reading of the book definitely has me curious for more.  I wanna know if these characters share more with their WildStorm counterparts than powers, names and visuals.  I hope so.  I miss Ellis' Stormwatch and the Authority.  I also hope that Apollo and the Midnighter are homosexual as they were positive images during Ellis run, I thought.  I think Millar took that a bit too far and over the top at times, but even during his run they were positive homosexual characters.  We'll see, I suppose.

I didn't quite intend for this blog to be simultaneously long and short at the same time.  I only got through two of the books of the thirteen I bought.  But this has taken me almost two hours to write, so I think I'm going to close it off here and finish the rest of the books throughout the week.

Come back tomorrow and I'll have my thoughts on Detective Comics # 1, Action Comics # 1, Swamp Thing # 1, and Batgirl # 1.

Bits and Pieces 13: Open With the Pull Tab

Use By Date

I don't know.  I really don't. 

When the New 52 was first announced -- DC Comics' soft reboot of their entire superhero line -- I was kind of excited for the possibilities of what was coming.  A fresh new start for the oldest superhero universe in American comics, a breeding ground of new possibilities and stories to be told; a brand new day.

Yet, when the first day came, August 31st, 2011, of this relaunch and the first comic given to us comic book readers was on the shelves, or, as it is in my case, available for download on the excellent Comixology app for my delightful little pocket device of preference, the end result left me wondering what had happened.

JLA # 1 (short for Justice League of America) reads like a very badly written fan-fiction version of the Justice League, but drawn by Jim Lee.  That shouldn't be the case, as Geoff Johns, the author of this little episode, is anything but a bad writer.  He's really good.  Yet for this particular comic book he gave us a team book with no team, a hit-the-ground-running adventure with no build up, no set up, no attempt at rebuilding the DC Universe for the potential new readers that are supposed to be flocking in droves to this new comic (which evidently happened).  It features Batman chasing some kind of glowy creature, being shot at by Gotham City PD, and running into the Green Lantern midway through.  Lantern joins him in his chase after this glowy creature only for the creature to blow itself up, then the duo runs to Metropolis where Lantern gets sucker punched by Superman.  It's nonsensical, it's light reading in the greatest sense but in that it loses the sense of awe that a superhero comic should have.  It's a very badly written comic by people that know better.

Almost twenty years ago, Jim Lee was involved in the Image Comics Exodus with his little comic book WildC.A.T.s with co-author Brandon Choi.  This book was accused of being derivative of Lee's former work on X-Men, which it may or may not have been, but I never saw it.  The book unraveled at a kinetic pace, rapid fast, but even there, in that single issue of a book that so many people hated was a better story being told than what we saw in JLA # 1, nineteen years later.

JLA # 1 reads as though it's the next adventure of several characters that everyone should already know, but this is being retold for the first time.  The soft reboot relaunch rewhatever reset the DC Universe, so long time readers and new readers alike are being exposed to Batman, Green Lantern and Superman again for the first time again.  I'm thinking that this little book, the first chapter in this universe-wide reboot, is meant to be read after the rest of the 52 have been read.  My theory is that this book should not have been read (or published) until the other 51 books have been read.  I'm going to attempt this at the beginning of October -- or whenever -- I get those 51 issues read, money provided, to see if I'm right about it.  I think I am.

Then again, maybe I'm just not the target audience of this reboot; this relaunch or rebirth of an entire universe.  I've been reading comics for a very long time now, and I've seen, literally, every trick the superhero genre has to offer thus far.  In this new age of superhero comics, the one that comes after the nastiness of the Dark Age and everything wonderful that lead up to this point (including my favorite Post Costume Age that gets very little attention), that this stuff is just not for me.  This new age being marked by the reboot (and a few other new #1s being issued by Marvel Comics) could very well be for a younger audience, or an audience only familiar with the superheroes through their big, silver screen variations.  Even with that in mind, I really can't see a justifiable reason for the likes of Geoff Johns or Jim Lee to dumb down their storytelling techniques and skills to appeal to a wider audience.

I suppose we'll see.  I actually told myself that JLA # 2 wasn't a comic I was going to buying because of the lackluster performance given to me in the first issue.  However, Jim Lee posted the pencils of a two-page spread of JLA # 2 featuring Batman and Superman and it looks brilliant.  And me, ever the artnut, really wants to see this spread inked by Scott Williams and colored by Alex Sinclair.  In the end, we shall see.

It's Official, You Suck

I remember getting Mortal Kombat 3 for my home console of choice back when it was released 199whenever.  I had already spent a high-school fortune on the arcade edition of the game at Aladdin's Castle, learning combos, playing other people, and performing fatalities.  At that time it was almost impossible to play a single player game to the end without someone else jumping in and taking you to the edge of your competitive skills.  I love playing people within proximity of myself (I despise online play because it's not the same as chilling at home or in the arcades playing other people), but I have this thing about the fiction of fighting games.  I love playing these games by myself, learning the stories of each character, and finishing the game with each of the characters available.

It wasn't until I got Mortal Kombat 3 (the first iteration, not Ultimate or Mortal Kombat Trilogy) home on a console I can't even remember (was it the PlayStation? probably) that I learned of the rude taunts of the game's boss character, Shao Kahn.  I knew of them from Mortal Kombat II, having played that game on the Super Nintendo for an unrecordable amount of hours, but this was something different.  There was the Mortal Kombat II taunts, of course, but then there was this one little line that both made me laugh out loud while playing games by myself and feel a little insulted.

"It's official, you suck!" shouted the sword and sorcery dressed Emperor of Outworld as he kicked my ass completely.

That taunt, once again, reared it's nasty head with the new Mortal Kombat released earlier this year.  This time, I scoffed, and delivered him multiple defeats as cheaply as I could.  Revenge was mine after the horrible ass beatings that Shao Kahn put on me in Mortal Kombat Trilogy -- one of the games with the worst AI opponents I'd ever challenged.

However, the joyous nature of my revenge from all those years was relatively short lived.  Yes, I had defeated Shao Kahn multiple times in the new Mortal Kombat game on several different modes of play.  I lost several battles along the way, I was even murdered by his hands with two relatively grotesque fatalities on occasion, but for the most part I told the Conan wannabe who was the real boss in his massive, Colosseum-like arena.  Then the Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection came out a few weeks ago and once again the taunt echoed in my ears as my digital avatar's face was pounded into a red mess.  Yet, the taunt wasn't being said by the Emperor Shao Kahn this time, at least not at first.  Oh, no.  It was echoing in my own ears from those memories of Mortal Kombat 3's first release on that unrememberable console as EVERYONE beat my ass into a red oblivion.  I resulted in pushing the difficulty down to the easiest setting imaginable for the game, and yet, the AI still knew how I was going to perform better than I did.  It knew the moves before I knew I was going to perform them.  It knew I was going to take flight to deliver an airbased arsenal of combatitive fury and promptly took to the air and knocked me out of it like a rabid surface to air missile.  PEW WOOSH BOOM _______ WINS.  That's how my first assault on the Arcade Kollection went for almost a week.

It almost seems that a lot of developers of games that primarily focus on the multiplayer aspect of the game (such as fighting games often do) forget about the single player aspect of that same game and either go out of their way to make it as unfun as possible, or simply neglect the fun factor of the game at all.  Games are supposed to be challenging, I completely agree with that, but when the challenge is to take down an opponent that can and will constantly render your entire offense moot and useless, it becomes unfun.

Unfun is no fun; unfun is bullshit.

However, I was fed up with the bullshit this morning.  After suffering the onslaught of a full-fledged migrainal attack at 9:30 this morning and sleeping the fucker off until 4:35 PM, I turned the PlayStation 3 on, picked up the military green DualShock controller, and loaded up the game.  I selected Mortal Kombat first, and picked Sub-Zero.  It's always Sub-Zero with me, even though Scorpion is my favorite of the two.  I don't understand that myself.  And I played through Mortal Kombat until it submitted to me the way I wanted it to.  I made it sit, I made it lay down, and I made it roll over and, inevitably, play fucking dead.  I had to result to a cheap tactic of hitting the opponents, especially Goro, with as many jump kicks as possible, but finally it succumbed to my offenses and the game's credits rolled.

[My biggest complaint about the Arcade Kollection's AI is that I've played newer games on their hardest difficulty settings, including the new Mortal Kombat, with the same resistance.]

Then it was on to Mortal Kombat II.  I decided to take a different route with the second feature by selecting Kitana instead of my favored ice-cold assassin.  Kitana was a favorite of mine when Mortal Kombat II hit the 'cades back in the day, and I used her diligently to destroy the arcade mode of the console version on the Super Nintendo.  Kitana's dehabilitating raising fan attack makes for a good use if the AI's defenses aren't ready for it.  The opponents put up their attacks and several continues later, the cast of Mortal Kombat II fell to Kitana's deadly fans and I was facing off against Kintaro and, subsequently, Shao Kahn with his cruel taunt.  Unfortunately for them, I remembered fully Kitana's cheap as hell tactics against these two, and both fell with a single attempt.

Two down, one to go.

Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, like Mortal Kombat 3 before it, and Mortal Kombat Trilogy after it, has the cheapest AI of the series.  As difficult as the two games were before it, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3's AI controlled opponents know everything you're going to do before you can even think about doing it.  There's a term called SNK Boss Syndrome out there in this fabulous world that was coined to describe the insane difficulties of SNK's fighting game bosses.  Rugal Bernstein, Geese Howard, these guys were relentless in their difficulty.  It seems that Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3's base characters contracted this apparently contagious syndrome and it's on full display after your first three wins in the game.  Unfortunately for me, the character that I ended up fighting against when the SNK Boss Syndrome kicked in was Jade with her projectile-proof glowy attacks and all that fun stuff. I lost count on how many continues was necessary for me to reach the first boss of the game, but I was changing characters left and right.  Sub-Zero, Scorpion, Smoke, Kitana and Kabal.  After almost acing through the Endurance Match -- where you fight against two opponents with one health bar, in this instance it was Jade and Reptile -- I met the biggest asshole of Mortal Kombat's elaborate mythology that isn't Shao Kahn: Motaro.  The centaur bastard of unrelenting offense.  It took several continues to get the rhythm of the bastard which was jump kick, jump kick, jump kick.  No other offense I could muster up was successful, but this aerial onslaught seemed to work until he was done.  Then Shao Kahn.  Shao Kahn and his bastard taunt which came again and again and again, and seemed to accompany every loss when the continue option was presented.

Finally, he fell, too.  A cheap tactic using Scorpion's spear attack over and over and over until the big bastard fell and the game was over.

After what felt like a literal lifetime, I learned that only two hours had passed.  Two hours of unrelenting martial arts supernature for the struggle of our very dimension and I was done.

I loved these games when I was younger, and here they are, arcade perfect in almost every way.  Yet, because of the AI difficulties I'm not entirely sure I can resume playing them with the same adoration I had almost twenty years ago.  Perhaps I'm just getting too old.  Perhaps again, the digital gloves need to be hung up and retired and greener pastures of easier explorations of my digital fascination with martial arts need to be explored.  Perhaps still, that's even more bullshit and I just need to avoid games with ridiculously cheap AI.

Earlier this summer I attempted to take on Marvel vs. Capcom 3's hardest difficulty setting and found it too relentless for me to tackle.  I'm not particularly good at the vs. game series in terms of consciously putting workable extravagant combinations together that also look quite beautiful, but watching the characters I've chosen being ritually destroyed by such combos at the hands of AI opponents had proven too much for me to handle and the unfun began and I gave it up. Until a couple of weeks ago.  I attempted it again and made the AI my bitch by adopting my own version of SNK Boss Syndrome by using Sentinel and repeating the same attack over and over again.  If the computer can do it, and it works for them, why can't I?  The game proved to be less difficult this way and I felt somewhat accomplished in achieving the objective.

But, playing a series of games almost twenty years old on the easiest difficulty and having the same issues with the AI and resulting to the same cheap tactics that do not expand my interest or skills within the game? 

Well, that just sucks.

So, I say to you, developers of the Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection:

"It's official, you suck."

THE ULTIMATE STREET FIGHTER REVIEW.

The two Street Fighter Ultimate Editions were books I wanted in my library immediately when I learned of them. Unfortunately I missed out on the previous editions of these two books, including a limited edition boxed set that has Gouki and M.Bison on the covers versus Ryu and Ken. There's an alternate version of the first book, too, that has Ryu in his white gi, whereas the edition I now own, off to the left of this text there, depicts the "Evil" Ryu version of the character -- or the Satsui no Hado ni Mezameta Ryu -- which suited me just fine, as I like the black versus red trade dressings.

But before I start gushing over what's between the covers, I have to issue out a huge warning to anyone who may be interested in these books: handle with care. The production value of these two editions is pretty top notch in every aspect except the binding. The binding began to fall apart the moment I opened the front cover of the first volume, and it was a relentless assault on the glue as I turned each page. This is literally a four-hundred-fifty hit combo on the books binding as each page brings it closer and closer to coming completely undone. It was very disappointing. The second book held together a bit better in the glue-and-pages department, but the cover came away from the rest of the book before I finished it. It really is a damned shame, 'cause these books are really pretty on the outside, but they don't hold up when compared to Street Fighter: Eternal Struggle or SF20: The Art of Street Fighter both are books that Udon published here in the states. It makes me a little sad on the inside.

Moving on, however, we have what's between the covers, and although it's a mixed bag in what it has to offer. On the bad side, we have some very wordy pages that ruin the art that they're covering, and they ruin the martial arts motif that Street Fighter has. I think the Udon team could've benefited themselves by watching more martial arts films than they did (and I think they watched a LOT) during the production of the Street Fighter comics. Sometimes you don't need a whole lot of words to tell a story when you have the expressions to give away the emotional context of the character. The scene that stood out for this was Sagat taking out his frustrations of losing to Ryu and monologuing the entire time. There's a few of those moments as well as some where there's too much talking while fighting. Not as bad as some comics I've read, but it's excessive. The last two complaints I have about the entire series is that the focus isn't centered around all of the characters and some are rendered as background noise only, and it instead centers around the "main" heroes of Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Guile and Cammy. It takes away from the draw that a fighting game has in that the only main character is whatever character you choose to pick, and the Street Fighter games covered in this series has a very large cast of characters. The last part is the Street Fighter II tournament itself that takes place in the second volume. It has too much build-up and the actual tournament isn't given a whole lot of time. Most of the fights are ridiculously short -- like Ken vs. Zangief -- and there's not a whole lot of drama to them until the later fights.

Now, for what I like:

The two volumes here are about nine-hundred pages of Street Fighter goodness. Unlike previous Street Fighter comics that have been done in the United States, this one devotes all its time to telling the story that is somewhat detailed in the games, and as close to the actual canon of the series as possible. The names are still changed, which isn't too big of a deal except where Gouki is concerned, but the story, the plot of it, is heavily influenced by the actual Japanese canon. Gouki isn't possessed by a demon, so on and so forth. Some of the American nuances made it into the series, like Dee Jay fighting with Capoeira and Ken and Ryu being Shotokan fighters -- he doesn't, and they're not.

The books cover the game's storyline, pretty closely at that, from the moment Ryu used the Satsui no Hado to defeat Sagat in the finals of the first Street Fighter tournament through the Street Fighter Alpha stories and ends with the Street Fighter II tournament.

We get a few short stories that appeared as back up stories in the original comics that begin to set things up with a wide variety of artists. For instance, the fight between Ryu and Sagat is drawn by Joe Madureira and it goes on from there. The main plot of the first half of the book deals with Ryu and Ken seeking out Gouki for the murder of their master, Gouken, while Chun-Li and Guile try to bring down Shadaloo, the criminal organization run by Bison. The second half deals more with Chun-Li, Guile and Cammy bringing down the rest of Shadaloo after Bison's apparent death, with Ken and Ryu somewhat caught in the middle.

It's pretty good stuff, and Udon's team of artists render the book brilliantly, which compensates on a big scale for the sometimes awkward writing. You can tell when Ken Siu-Chong hits his stride with the writing which is about the start of the second volume. He's not bad at all, but his hiccups are easy to spot. The art is something else, though, especially for the main chunk of stories. When I first started reading the monthly comics, I was a little more than weary about the action and the martial arts scenes. They were too game centric in my opinion, and by that I mean that the characters do a LOT of their moves from the games. But as the series goes on, the pacing of the action sequences puts this at the tip-top of martial arts comics. I don't think anything has been done better that I can remember reading with the exception of two Japanese comics: Lone Wolf and Cub and Hiroaki Samura's Blade of the Immortal. This stuff is really well done. Everything is well paced and plotted, and the way they angled the "camera" for each panel or frame is a delight each and every time. The two fights that really stand out in the first volume is a fight between Ken and Ryu versus Gouki, which they lose miserably, and a pretty awesome Bruce Lee styled fight between Fei Long and Chun-Li versus a whole lot of bad guys. There's also a battle royale worth mentioning at the closing of the book featuring Chun-Li, Guile, Ken, Ryu and Sakura vs. Vega, Balrog and a bunch of Shadaloo leftover cronies.

The second volume really kicks into high gear as we follow Ryu on his quest to become the best martial artist he can to face Gouki, lots of Shadaloo stuff as Vega takes control of the Bison-absent organization; lots of Cammy, Guile and Chun-Li stuff. Cammy's struggling to find herself, Guile's dealing with a failing relationship, and Chun-Li wants to bring Shadaloo down completely. We also get treated to a short but sweet battle between Gen and Gouki that Street Fighter IV has rendered absolutely senseless. Gen is suffering from Lukemia, but feels that way of dying is beneath him. He wants to fight to the death, and Gouki obliges him -- which is what happens in the games (however, Gen is in Street Fighter IV and Super Street Fighter IV, which are separate games with separate plots, and SFIV takes place after the Street Fighter II tournament, and post Gen's death). Then Bison is resurrected. Upon his resurrection we learn the significance of his connection to Cammy (she's a clone of him of which he was intending on downloading his consciousness into if he needed to) and his connection to Rose (his soul resides in her). Ryu continues to struggle with his inner demon. The Satsui no Hado ni Mezameta version of Ryu is a fantastical character that exists only in Ryu's mind, his darkside, if you will. The Satsui no Hado is the true form of the martial art taught to Ken and Ryu by Gouken, although Gouken toned it down considerably and turned it into an art. The art was intended to kill, which is what Gouki uses. In the Street Fighter mythology, it's a special power-like version of the art that only a select few can use, Gouki and Ryu both have the ability to use it -- Gen uses a similar form of Chinese martial art. What this hints to, and seems to almost have always hinted to, is that Ryu is the son of Gouki, but I think Capcom has denied that time and time again. So Ryu gets in these huge fights with his evil, darker version of himself that all take place in his imagination.

Then the tournament invites are sent out. The rest of the second volume is all buildup to the tournament followed by the tournament itself. The buildup includes a series of qualifying matches that are pretty cool. These matches feature some of the characters that appear in the Street Fighter Alpha series like Sodom, Rainbow Mika, Guy and Cody, Dan Hibiki and a whole slew of others. A couple of characters, Hugo and Poison, weren't featured in a Street Fighter game until Street Fighter III, but it was nice seeing them. The Japanese qualifier is hard to follow as it seems to be a battle royale between Zangief, E. Honda, Rainbow and Sodom, but it eventually boils down to Honda and 'Gief being attacked by a bunch of "Geki" ninjas and destroying the lot of them to make it into the tournament. Geki is a character from the first Street Fighter game that has seemingly disappeared. In these two volumes we learn that there's a whole clan and they all look the same and one of them was killed by Gen. Tangent. The Hong Kong qualifier has a pretty funny fight between Dhalsim and Adon where Adon gets schooled without laying a finger on the Yoda-like Dhalsim (Dhalsim is very much written like the Yoda character that appears in Empire Strikes Back, not the prequels, but one that is a lot more curious and not afraid to get into the mix of things). Then there's two fights that happen at the same time with Fei Long and Chun-Li where the both of them have to fight a large group of characters. All of the characters are unfamiliar to me in terms of Street Fighter, but bear resemblances to other fighting game characters. Fei Long dispatches his pretty quickly, Chun-Li gets blinded a la Jean Claude Van Damme in Bloodsport and gets help from Yun and Yang. The USA qualifier is pretty funny. Balrog is in charge of it and he decides to pull a Willy Wonka and place four golden tickets in an abandoned building that's set to explode in a very short time frame. So Guile, ThunderHawk, Ryu, Ken, Rolento, Hugo, Poison, Cody and Birdie all have to scramble to get the tickets. If you've played Street Fighter II at all, you'll know who gets them, if not, I'll spoil it for you: Guile, T.Hawk, Ryu and Ken. The fight between Cody and Ryu is awesome, though. Cody is a lot like Ryu in that the fight is almost everything, except Cody's not looking to better himself. He's just looking for more fights. The tournament itself goes by way too fast with way too many fights being ridiculously short. It ends just as epic as it should have, though. The final fight of the tournament is Ryu and M.Bison, but it never happens. Gouki steps in and with some minor help from several other characters that blow up Bison's Psycho Drive machine, Gouki destroys him with the Shun Goku Satsu. Then it's Ryu versus Gouki, which is an awesome fight to read almost as much as it is to play.

The only drawback is that there's no epilogue that gives any hints to Street Fighter IV's continuation to the series, which I would have liked. A small explanation as to why a lot of characters have been resurrected (Bison, Gouken, Gen, Rose, etc.,etc.) and how Seth took over S.I.N., Shadaloo's science division.

Other than the slight drawbacks of the production quality and some iffy writing early on, these two books come highly recommended from me -- a very long time Street Fighter fan -- to anyone who enjoys the Street Fighter games. The production -- aside from the binding -- is very high-quality, the art is awesome and fits with the Street Fighter vibe of things head to kicking toe. The writing starts slow and iffy, but gets a lot better as the story progresses. There's some really great philosophical moments going on in the books all over the place that are very much a part of the Street Fighter world, martial arts movies everywhere, and from the likes of Bruce Lee, Sun Tzu and many others that have written about the combatitive arts. They're surprisingly good reads and turn out to be a great deal of fun.