Instigating from boredom

More words from Jimmy M. But since he's on one of those long-winded rambles of his, I'll put them behind a cut. Because honestly I'm the one rattling his cage and I still find it very much tl;dr

( Jimmy M for the few who might care )

Ok, lets add some actual comics content to this post, so its not just me mocking Jimmy in a Trollish attempt for a reaction...

You people have been buying ps238 right? Because if I recall my LCS e-mail for this week, there was another issue already hitting the stands. If you enjoy super-hero comics this is a book you should definitely be reading. Aaron Williams' was a pure genius for writing about a grade school for super-humans. Plus his characters have more depth and awesome to them than many Big Two books using characters with 50 plus years of back-story. AND he's got the genius kid of a Mad Scientist version of Phil Foglio. AWESOME!

Anyway, if you want to test the waters he does an ongoing web version where he puts up the older issues. Here's the start of the online archive. Go read! Then go buy! GO NOW! Come back to mock (or defend if you like) Jimmy later!

Making it Good: The Matrix

Gods do I hate this movie. Everything about it is so damned stupid. The villain is a moron. The supposed computer programmer lead barely understands even the concepts of hax and cheat codes. And the reality altering rebels are soooo unimiginative. Add on the Love Conquers All ending and never have I have been so dissapointed by a movie hyped by so many...

So to fix that (and we're not going to worry about the sequels and cartoons and video games and every other piece of media you actually needed to experiance to make the story make a damned bit of sense) first we'll change the basic VR set-up. Their is still a Master Program. It still keeps the majority of humanity living in a VR world with their bodies living and dieing in tubes. And why does it do this? No one knows. Its a vast computer AI. Its motivations are so far removed from humanity its fairly pointless to even try...

So the VR world. Instead of putting humans in some faux 90s Earth, instead they get to be living in the 12th Century AD. The Master Program is God, the Smith Programs are its Clergy and the Outsider humans are Wizards. In fact the first half of the movie comes off ENTIRELY as some kind of LoTR/fantasy type movie. Neo (and no that won't be his name. Who is named New?) seems to be the typical Chosen One/Arthur type, Morpheus is his Merlin and so on. All the standard Hero's Journey Stuff from King Arthur to Star Wars...

And then half-way thru the movie, after a big spectacular FX battle between Wizards and Clergy, Chosen Kid gets inducted to the Real World. Where he promptly Freaks. The. Fuck. Out. You now get a fairly rushed montage sequence showing the Outsiders putting the poor kid's brain back together. This is when the reveal that this movie is more CyberPunk/Apoclyptica SF than Tolkien Fantasy. And the Kid is still pretty well screwed-up mentally, but he's holding on because he's fallen for Trinity...

After that we go with the meeting the Oracle and the kids who show abilities to warp the VR world WITHOUT knowing they're in VR. Traitor human, capture of Morpheus, many deaths, assault on stronghold of evil, etc etc etc. Final Big Boss battle where the One/Kid tears the local program to pieces saving Trinity and his friends...

Wakes up back on the ship with the survivors heading for humanity's last city. Shots of the Program (still in 12th Century mode) where God is rebuilding the destroyed area. And where you see Elrond Smith rebuild himself, say something crypic and creepy and wander off as a new Rogue Program...

Roll credits...

Jimmy + Comics for the not Caring

( More of Jimmy's thoughtful responses )

So to give the many who couldn't care less about my attempts to create an internet feud, lets talk about comics that have moved to the web. Namely Girl Genius and Finder. Both the Foglio's and Carla Speed McNeil made the decision to move their print comics to web only versions. And then make their money selling trades. Now for McNeil I haven't heard how well thats working. But for the Foglio's everything I've read seems to indicate it was a HUGELY successful move for them...

Plus of course both are great books. Girl Genius was moving a little slow of late, but then it kicked it back up a notch with Gilgamesh's recent showing of Utter Bad-Assery. If you enjoy Steampunk style settings, then hopefully you're already a fan. If you're not, you should go now and check this comic out...

Finder was always a difficult book to describe. Its SciFi, and the setting seems to be one of those Far Future ones where Human society is barely recognizable from its current state. But its mostly about a man named Jaeger who is a former soldier, sin-eater, tracker and general ittirent charming rogue. And also about a family he got himself involved with that lives in one of the large cities. Heres an intro page. I own the first four trades for the book, all based off an odd-issue I once got for free at a con. The series hooked me THAT easily. Right now McNeil posts working pages and then when she has enough done, sells the trade. Hmmm. Going back down her newsblog I see that the first trade is now available as a Hard-Cover. Thats a good sign as to the success of her current business plan...

Oh yeah, a link to the latest page button and rss feed. Theres also already an lj-feed...