Popcultureshock.com is the only place I saw it, so we’re mirroring it here: Preview pages for Civil War #4, pages 1 through 3. Er, and the cover. But I bet you could’ve figured that out without my help. Here’s a link to their previews page, and here’s our mirrored pages:

In related news, Christos Gage – who wrote the fantastic Deadshot mini for DC a couple years ago – will be writing an upcoming Civil War one-shot, Casualties of War: Iron Man/Captain America. As he describes it during his Newsarama interview, “This is the first time since it all started that they’ve met one on one, out of respect for their many years as friends and allies, to talk it out. We’ll reference incidents from Marvel history to show why each man feels as strongly as he does, and each will have to defend his position as he tries to convince the other to rethink his own.” It’s supposed to take place earlier in the series than issue 4. (Obviously.)

Gage’s previous work includes episodes of Law & Order: SVU and tomorrow’s new Union Jack mini, spinning out of his appearance in Captain America. Though the issue arrives in stores tomorrow, but SilverBulletComics got a preview copy and sicced their reviewers on it. Overall it seemed to get pretty good reviews, despite the scathing pair of two-bullet reviews. I’ll have to see for myself tomorrow if the magic he worked on Deadshot will hold up in the world of Marvel.

The Walking Dead #31
Written by Robert Kirkman, art by Charlie Adlard

It’s no mystery why Robert Kirkman’s star has risen so quickly. Just a little while ago, his only two books were this and Invincible, and if you’re new and your name’s only going to be on two things, you better be sure they’re of this kind of quality. Invincible’s a story for another week though, as tomorrow we’re getting a new issue of The Walking Dead.

The quick ‘n dirty setup – Rick is a cop (now, a former cop) who wakes up in a hospital, only to find that just about everyone’s been turned into zombies. He quickly fought his way to his wife and son, and joined up with a whole crew of survivors. Things are constantly going to hell in their little handbasket, and while they’re not losing people left and right any more, the stakes are still just as high.

Currently, Rick’s been captured by a small town of survivors that have set up a Colosseum-type environment where they have people fighting the zombies for sport. It’s really quite grisly, and Adlard’s black and white art is the perfect moodsetter every single time.

I just checked out the 5 page preview at PopCultureShock, and I’m more excited than ever to see what comes next. A 6 page preview would’ve been far less effective, I’m thinking. If you check it out, you’ll see what I mean. Anyway, I mostly checked it out to be sure, and now I can say it with confidence – Kirkman isn’t just writing a fantastic, well-crafted story, he’s also successfully bringing you up to speed within the first pages, and doing it all perfectly organically within the story.

Do yourself a favor – Get your shop to start setting you aside a copy of this book. It’s one of my absolute favorite comic books, and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be enjoying it just as much as I am.

For days I’ve been wondering how much in Canadian money the Wii would go for. Speculating with friends and coworkers I assumed it would be in the whereabouts of 300$ as we always seem to get the short end of the exchange rate. Well I got tired and wondering and visited Nintendo of Canada’s website. Right there for everyone to see since September 14th was the announcement that the Wii console would launch in Canada on November 19th for 280$.

With a very appealing 1.10% exchange rate when compared to the US this is great news for Canadian gamers who are far too used to in excess of a 50% markup for some products such as comics.

One of the most enduring subgenres of gaming is the Strategy-RPG, or SRPG as I’ll refer to it for the purposes of this write-up. Combining turn-based RPG conventions with grib-based strategy, these games are like a marriage of chess, Command and conquer, and Final Fantasy. From Shining Force on the Sega genesis to Final Fantasy Tatics, this subset of RPGS are easy to pick up and play, yet difficult to master. This week’s $20 GOTY and lost classics will take a look at two entries in this genre.

[Read the rest of this entry…]

Boy, there has been a lot of Wii news this week. And with all the press releases and announcements, it was almost easy to overlook that Nintendo showed off new videos at their press events. Note: all links are to Windows Media, but there are Quicktime versions available.

First up, GameTrailers has a legnthy video showing the fishing demo from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.
Nintendo also released a new all-gameplay trailer, showing off a lot of Link’s abilities plus the widescreen mode.

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption had the same demo as E3, but this gameplay video goes over the game a lot better than anything I saw in May. Theres also a better look at the Ridley free-fall boss battle.

Oh yeah, I guess there was Battalion Wars, Wario Ware, and Red Steel too. And a Dragon Ball Z game that looks terrible.

Ben Yee has put up a few reviews of the upcoming Classics figures, which includes pictures as well. Hit the link below to check out Prime, Bumblebee, Rodimus and Astrotrain.

http://bwtf.com/classics/

Over the summer 70 seperate snippets of video were released to HansoExposed, threatening to reveal the intentions and history of the mysterious Alvar Hanso, the unseen catalyst for many of of the events on the TV series LOST.
Here is the complete video, dutifully reconstructed. I might mention the potential for story spoilers here, but since the intent was to give hardcore fans something to do in the nearly 5 months the show is off the air between the May finale and the October 4 return, I’ll bet you’ll watch it anyway.

Side note: Have a look at this adorable Hurley action figure that showed up on TNI this week. Actor Jorge Garcia had his face scanned so its a perfect likeness, and he’s holding up the flag from the golf course he made in the first season.

Too bad its a Mcfarlane figure and will likely crumble to peices if I purchased it. You can take a look at the entire first series, that includes first episode Jack, the Hatch playset, and bad-ass survivalist Locke. The most accurate toy of the bunch goes to Shannon since shes as worthless in plastic as she is on screen!

Follow the Japanese and North American press conferences held in the past 24 hours Nintendo’s official Wii website has launched providing some great video coverage of features, information on games and technical specifications of the system too boring to be detailed at a press conference.

Movies featuring a user interaction with a number of features of the Wii channel give a good insight into what the menus and such will look like. The fact that wide screen displays are used in all these shows great promise for the possibility of widescreen support for many titles. This page gives a nice explanation of many of the services offered.

We get a nice rundown of some choice games. Wii Sports, Zelda, Wario Ware, Excite Truck, Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid, Mario Strikers, Big Brain Academy and Batalion Wars are featured. There’s also another 42 games listed to be released by March 2007.

The Japanese version of the page features a great video combining clips of many games and some bozos playing them.

Now some noteable things about the Wii’s hardware.

– It’s tiny
– Wireless capable out of the box using a wireless 802.11 b or g
– Can be networked using a USB 2.0 LAN adapter which I figure is something you plug into one of the USB slots to accept an ethernet cable that does not seem to be included with the system
– Backwards compatible with Gamecube games, 4 controllers and 2 memory cards (which will hopefully support the Microphone peripherals)
– Stadard DVD sized discs for games
– 4 Wii remote capacity
– SD memory card slot
– AV Multi-output port for component, composite or S-video which, if as described is a single port, is not the same port we’ve seen on the SNES, N64 and Gamecube alike. Great to see them supporting component video again after removing it from later models of the Gamecube
– Blu-Ray