Dr. Strange: The Oath #5 (of 5)
written by Brian K. Vaughan, art by Marcos Martin

This book clearly illustrates why Brian K. Vaughan is one of comics’ top writers today, and why it’s an absolute travesty that he’s going to be writing creator-owned stuff solely from now on. Dr. Strange is often criticised for being too powerful of a character. He waves his hands, and the problem is solved immediately. There’s no limit to what he can do, and so there’s no situation where he’s ever in real danger. Brian K. Vaughan not only slaps these misconceptions in the face, he also goes on to make you excited and eager to read about the guy’s exploits.

In this book, Wong is dying of cancer, and Dr. Strange went to great lengths to find a cure – but then the cure was stolen by a sorcerer who works at a pharmaceutical company who can’t afford for their business to be ruined. Throughout, one of the more surprising aspects that Vaughan has explored is Dr. Strange’s ruined hands – Strange got into sorcery because his hands were mangled in a car accident, putting an end to his days as a surgeon. Another side effect of mangled hands: It’s quite difficult to shoot the giant eye of a giant demonic being strangling your friends – even if it’s Hitler’s gun, which you stole from your enemy – when your fingers are unsteady and crooked. Oh, and Night Nurse has been hanging out with them the whole time which, I promise you, is pretty awesome and brilliant in itself.

What Vaughan does is take the core components of the character – previously a doctor, has ruined hands, now practices sorcery – and celebrates them in the midst of a compelling and exciting story. I’ve never read a Dr. Strange story that equals this one, and if you’ve got any sense whatsoever, you’ll scoop up all 5 issues of this mini when you hit the shop tomorrow.

CBR is reporting on a new series featuring independently owned creations – from Savage Dragon to Shi to Madman to Cerebus – called “War of the Independents.” A cursory glance at the accompanying image tells me … well, it tells me there’s going to be dozens of characters I don’t recognize. Is that Captain Canuck in there?

The inspiration comes from artist Dave Ryan, who explains that having just survived Infinite Crisis and Civil War, he figured he’d never seen a similar sort of story featuring independent characters. The story he has planned is going to focus on “the villains Kain and Orcus trying to create a reverse tower of Babel to open the gates of Hell and destroy the Earth.” Not a terribly well-thought out plan, if you ask me – where will they live then? The moon?

As for when we can expect to see this, according the article, these villains are going to be introduced in Ryan’s Penance book in March 2008. So we may not be seeing this for a while, unless that ’08 was a typo for ’07. In the meantime, I’ll just oscillate between being worried and excited about seeing another potential train-wreck of a crossover.

I’ve never considered myself a Trekkie, only because a Trekkie would chuckle at my lack of basic knowledge of Starfleet. I am a casual fan though, and so I’m able to quite enjoy former Star Trek: The Next Generation star Wil Wheaton’s look back at the show.

Wheaton’s talks enthusiastically about his part on the show as an actor and also as a fan of Star Trek. He’s also pretty frank about being disliked by Trekkies, and slyly points out how corny the macguffins in the ST:TNG were.

Read on for Wil’s thoughts on Fairpoint, Ferengi, and sexy time on the Tsiolkovsky.

Day 3 seems to be grinding to a halt, and it’s turned out to be a little bit of a lighter news day for everyone. Here’s the bullet points:

• Brian K. Vaughan’s Ex Machina will end at issue #50, putting the series at about its halfway mark.
• Here’s an interesting recap of George Perez‘s panel, where he shares interesting stories, like how he stayed up 72 hours straight to get the original Crisis penciled and finished.
• Sci-Fi channel and Virgin comics have established a partnership, presumably to get shows into comic form, and comics into show form.
• Sci-Fi also had a panel dedicated to Battlestar: Galactica, revealing there would be a direct-to-DVD movie, which will actually later air on Sci-Fi. Surprised it isn’t the other way around, but whatever works, I guess. (Thanks to Crazy for pointing this one out.)

If anything more comes in, I’ll be sure to update, but today seems to have petered out a bit. Just for fun, here’s a recap of yesterday’s biggest headlines –

• Marvel and Top Cow Comics are both currently working on a digital distribution plans for their comics.
• Marvel announced a Halo ongoing comic, to be written by Brian Michael Bendis, with art by Alex Maleev.
• Ultimate delays – Ultimates #13 should be out by May or April (I’m betting not before May), Orson Scott Card is still working on Ultimate Iron Man 2, no release date yet for Ultimates 3, Ultimate Wolverine/Hulk has a completed script for 3 – and almost one for 4.
• Avengers/Transformers update! Extended details (cast lists, synopsis, etc.) can be found at Newsarama.
• On the DC side, Dan Didio got flustered and admitted that the Red Robin and Flash in the recent teaser image are Jason Todd and Barry Allen. Everyone else on the panel got mad at him, so this must be pretty important.

Splinter taught them to be Ninja Teens, Ubisoft turned them into a Prince of Persia knock-off.
Nah, I’m not going to slam this completely, because the ninja action combined with some wall jumping looks totally natural for this franchise, especially given what we’ve seen from the two trailers. Ubisoft couldn’t do worse than Konami, who turned in from pretty forgettable PS2 games based on the recent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle animated series.

But if new games don’t float your boat, how about an olde one? 360 Style got a hold of some screen shots of the original 1989 TMNT game for Xbox Live Arcade thats floating around on Partnernet(a developer only version of Xbox Live). It looks legit, and if there is 4-player online co-op I’ll fork over whatever asking price they have. A fairly straight forward button masher, I have to wonder what will be used for achievements…

Finally, the ESRB has rated the original NES game for play on the Wii Virtual Console.

Update: InsideGamer.nl has video of the Xbox Live game in action!

Day 2 of the New York Comic-Con isn’t quite over yet, but a lot’s happened already. All that, and there’s a couple tidbits leftover from yesterday that happened a little later in the day. Want to know more about the Avengers/Transformers book? How about the future of producing and selling comics digitally? Or maybe who’s working on the new Halo ongoing? It’s a bit less concise than yesterday, so read on for more!
[Read the rest of this entry…]

Before Knights of the Old Republic, Battlefront, Republic Commando, heck, even X-Wing vs Tie Fighter, there was the Super Star Wars trilogy. Solid 2-d platforming action similar to Super Castlevania, multiple playable characters, a near-perfect recreation of the film’s original score, and mode 7 vehicle sequences helped to bring the original trilogy to gaming consoles in a way that couldn’t be matched to this day. The difficulty was high, but it was on a Ninja Gaiden level where your pitfalls would only make you want to try that much harder to get through the games. Yeah, we rave about how good Lego Star Wars, but this is the best interpretation of the original trilogy that doesn’t involve kid’s toys or advanced gaming technologies.

Instead of simply porting over Unreal Championship 2004 on the PC, Epic Games (you know them from “Gears of War”) decided to take a different approach to the next Xbox iteration of its Xbox FPS fragfest. From Doom’s chainsaw to Halo’s energy sword, melee combat has always been a part of FPS combat. This time however, hand-to-hand combat skills are just as important as your l33t sniper skills. Shooting at your opponent isn’t enough, now you have to learn how to pull off combos, reflect shots, and use special attacks just like in a fighting game. There are several characters to choose from, each with different abilities and techniques. Along with the standard deathmatch, team deathmatch, and capture the flag modes, there is also the new nali slaughter mode, in which you have to kill more Nali creatures than your opponent. Single player modes include tournament ladders for each character, challenge mode, and the story based “Rites of Ascension”, which tells the story of Anubis, one of the game’s characters. Of course, you can also take the game on Xbox Live as well, and you can even grab the free downloadable content (including new characters and arenas) while you’re at it.