Ghost Rider Finale
written by Ivan Velez, art by Javier Saltares & Mark Texeira

Time for a history lesson.

In 1998, the then-current Ghost Rider series was canceled at issue #93. The catch is, the big end of the storyarc was scheduled to take place at issue #94. Issue #93 simply ended with the death of Dan Ketch, leaving fans with one crapper of a cliffhanger. As Mike Sterling – comic book shop owner – says, “The result? My having to tell customers for eight years that, no, there never was a #94, honest, I’m not kidding, and having them look at me like I’m 1) an idiot, or 2) lying to them.” This took place during some of the harshest time for the comic book industry, and the simple fact of the matter was, Marvel couldn’t afford to publish it. If you want some more of the details, as well as see a glimpse of the unpublished pages and the script, you can see read on here.

However, tomorrow, with the Ghost Rider movie looming near, Marvel has seemingly decided to increase product on the shelf (despite the lack of any connection to the movie characters or its story), and they’ve done a good turn by finally bringing issue #94 to the stands. While 12 pages were originally penciled, it seems (based on solicitation info) Saltares and Texeira were brought back together to finish the thing, which is a pleasantly surprising effort from Marvel. This “Finale” issue will also include issue #93 (to give the reader a complete story), and also some undescribed “bonus material,” whatever that includes.

Whether or not this book will be worth your money … well, your mileage may vary. But at least now you’ll know what the hell this thing is when you see it on the stands.

If you haven’t seen it, it’s probably is as bad as you’ve heard. If you’ve watched it, you probably didn’t see much or any of the fourth season. That’s a shame, because that’s when the show actually got good.

Both Star Treks Voyager and Enterprise are the brainchild of Brannon Braga, a scriptwriter-turned-producer from the days of Next Generation. His signature trademark consists of stories based on strange temporal/spatial anomolies, hence their preponderance in Voyager (and indeed the premise of the entire show), and the ill-advised Temporal Cold War that consumed Star Trek: Enterprise from the inside out.

The beginning of the fourth season saw Braga replaced by Manny Coto, who put an end to this horrible storyline. What followed were several three-episode arcs dealing with Trek history. From Kahn-like genetically-enhanced humans, to the history of Surak and Vulcan, and an explanation for the Frito-Lay (i.e. “ridgeless”) Klingons of Kirk’s era, this season fulfilled the inherent promise and potential of the series after three grueling years.

[Read the rest of this entry…]

The Four Horsemen have posted the fifth round of their FANtastic Exclusive polls to determine this year’s action figure. This round focuses on weapons. The Elephant Swordsman will feature two large swords as seen in his concept art, but this poll will determine a third bladed weapon. You can check out the next round at the FANtastic Exclusive site.

Some of you may remember a little video I made on the 2006 exclusive.

The Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commision has approved a request by YTV to have an anime themed channel in Canada. The target of the channel would be 18+ which is a change considering YTV stands for “Youth Television”.

A lot of numbers are thrown around in this broadcasting decision which serve only to confuse people but so much to say the channel will have to be exclusively anime and anime related shows. I suppose it remains to be seen exactly what the CRTC counts as anime. Interest in a similar French channel was mentioned though no details are included. As YTV does not have a French equivalent these requests likely came from elsewhere.

Still far too early to talk about when this may happen or what cable packages will offer it but this is promising for Canadian anime fans who are unable to watch many anime programs broadcast on US exclusive stations such as Cartoon Network. Equivalent Canadian channels such as Teletoon play a fraction of these shows often months to years later.

Of course the reason we can’t just watch Cartoon Network in the first place is because of the CRTC but hey just for today let’s be glad they’ve done something good for a change.

Thanks to Cybersnark for pointing out this post with the news.

I’ve been a loyal GameFly subscriber for several years now. I love being able to try out something new without spending $50 or putting up with ill-tempered EBGameShlub employees. It’s made me a better gamer, and more open-minded.

So, it’s with sadness I mailed back the last game I’ll ever get from there today. You see, I have 15 Xbox 360 games in my queue. All of them have “Short Wait” or “Long Wait” next to them. I tried looking in at the full list of Xbox 360 games and of 127 titles listed, not a single one is available for rent right now. What the hell? I understand a lot of people got X-boxes for X-Mas but this is X-treme.

Then it hit me: Gamerscores. So many people are renting games to up their gamerscores that it’s rendered the service useless to a weekender like myself. I could probably leave those 15 games at the top of my queue for months and still get fed random DS games sitting at the bottom of the list. I was lucky to get Chromehounds one time, though unlucky when I fell asleep during the training level. If the best I can get is that slow moving snoozefest, my money is not being well spent.

So, I’m cancelling. Prices are still sky-high on even used 360 games; but by saving my $22 a month, I might be able to afford them. Or at least I can enter a brick-and-mortar shop and get a game in hand right away. GameFly does share the blame here though, when launch titles are still in high demand, they should be upping the stock to meet that demand, instead of letting me sit and wait for a good game.

Shamelessly checking Jenna Fischer‘s Myspace blog, I noticed this tidbit among the din of losing the Golden Globe…

This week we are shooting with hot shot director Joss Whedon! This has been especially exciting for me because I already knew Joss. (He has known my husband for a long time.) Joss has quickly become one of our favorite directors. The crew loves him. He’s a huge fan of the show and therefore gets really into every detail of the show. He watches us even when we are in the background of a scene and compliments our smallest of choices. It’s been a total dream. I’m currently the background of a scene and I can see him hunched over the monitors watching a scene and giggling like a little girl. I’m going to miss him.

Geek Icon Joss Whedon takes on the Office? How terrible cool for him! Joss, as you may or may not know, got his start writing TV on Roseanne.

Of course, there’s always talk of special directors working on TV shows and you’d be really pressed to tell the difference. I remember at the height of Quentin Tarantino’s pop stardom between Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown he directed an “ER” that was so amazingly exactly like every other ER that you’d never know or care someone more famous than normal was directing. That’s TV for you. If he does a good job, it shouldn’t be different from the rest of the show.

Stephen Colbert is scheduled to make an appearance at New York’s Comic Con, which runs this February 23-25th. He’s only going to be there on Friday the 23rd, at 3:30 PM, but come 3:31, he’s GONE. Or so I assume. The press release didn’t say any specifics about a departure time. Don’t get too worked up yet though – he won’t be doing any panels or any other scheduled public speaking. Apparently he’s mostly just available to sign stuff, like busoms. On the side, he’ll be helping to promote the upcoming 5-issue comic from Oni Press, Stephen Colbert’s Tek Jansen, which should be out in stores sometime in March. Please note – Stephen Colbert’s Tek Jansen is not actually written or drawn by Stephen Colbert. Consider yourself informed.

RobotBling has produced a tribute to Gunpei Yokoi, probably the biggest influence on Nintendo as a company, predating even Miyamoto’s genius creations.

This entry largely deals with Game & Watch LCD games, though it also has some interesting tid-bits on Yokoi himself, and Nintendo’s early history. A second installment is promised, and I eagerly look forward to it.