Gift Guide is a series of articles highlighting some of our top picks for gift suggestions. Each article covers a specific genre with explanations of why we think these items make worthy gifts.
Today’s Gift Guide topic is graphic novels. When you think about the term graphic novel today, often it is associated with comic books and superheroes. This is not always the case, however. Today’s list is comprised of half superhero stories and half non-superhero stories that are equally, if not moreso, compelling.
American Born Chinese
Gene Yang weaves together three separate stories. The first is a folk tale of a Monkey King who must come to terms with his true nature after declaring himself a god. The second storyline follows a young chinese boy that moves to America. After living there for a while, he meets another boy who recently moved from China and is quickly frustrated at his culture shock. The third plotline follows the sitcom of a boy in high school who’s Chinese cousin, Chin-Kee, comes to visit and immediately and deliberately follows one stereotype after another, completely embarassing the high schooler.
Why we like it: In addition to winning the Michael Printz Award, what could be considered the young adult literature equivalent of the Newbery Medal, the book takes a hilarious and light hearted look at racial stereotypes, coming to terms with, and appreciating this heritage.
Marvel Entertainment has just announced the Robert Downey Jr. has officially signed on for The Avengers. Jon Favreau has also been announced to executive produce the feature. The recent news of Don Cheadle taking up the mantle of James Rhodes from Terrance Howard is also made official in this press release stating that he will be on hand for Iron Man 2, The Avengers and subsequent Iron Man films.
Choice quote:
In a movie event, THE AVENGERS will bring together the super hero team of Marvel Comics characters for the first time ever, including Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, the Hulk and more, as they are forced to band together to battle the biggest foe they’ve ever faced.
The highly anticipated sequel to IRON MAN will be released in theatres on May 7, 2010 and THE AVENGERS will be released July 15, 2011. Both films will be distributed by Paramount Pictures.
At the time of its release, this Data East-developed game was second only to Konami’s X-men game in terms of multiplayer beat-em-up action, and even today it maintains its charm. Taking control of either Captain America, Iron Man, Vision, or Hawkeye, you battle your way through various supervillians in order to make it to the Red Skull’s moon base. You’ll meet Whirlwind, the Wizard, Ultron, Crossbones, and several other familiar Avengers villains. You’ll even run into Juggernaut and the Sentinels from the x-men comics. Quicksilver, Namor, the Wasp, and Wonder Man make cameo appearences. There are even some shooter segments to mix up the action. The game’s English translation took some hits (“Why should it goes well?”) when it came over here, but the game is still enjoyable, especially when you bring along friends. There is an absolute zero chance of this being re-released in any way (primarily due to the fact that Data East no longer exists and Activision holds the licensing rights to most major Marvel properties), so you’re going to have to do some searching to find the cartridge or cabinet. If you do manage to run across the game, check it out, and it will tide you over until Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 hits sometime down the road.
This is the big spot to promote Iron Man during last night’s big game. If YouTube doesn’t do it for you, watch it in High Definition at apple.com.
If you want all the commercials that played during the Super Bowl for review, TV Squad has them all collected here.
Welcome back to Xavier’s school for gifted youngsters. This is part 2 of our special edition X-men $20 GOTW and lost classics. In the first part we looked at some of the lows of the X-men franchise. In this second part, we’ll take a look at the Marvel Vs Capcom series, as well as Activision’s X-men games. You can find pretty much all of these games in stores, and most of them retail for $20 or less. [Read the rest of this entry…]
In 2004, developer Raven created the smash hit X-Men Legends. This game took Marvel’s merry mutants and sent them throughout the X-men universe in 4-player action rpg goodness. The game featured customizable stats, upgradable powers, and a huge load of fan service. Raven followed up the following year with X-Men Legends 2: Rise of Apocalypse which addressed the small amount gameplay issues found in the original XML and featured a story which included even more of the X-Men universe, including elements from the Age of Apocalypse storyline. In 2006, Raven decided to let the whole Marvel universe get in on the act with Marvel Ultimate Alliance. This game allowed fans to experience their favorite (and not so favorite) Marvel super heroes in a way they never imagined possible. [Read the rest of this entry…]
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American Born Chinese
