Saturday, May 16, 2009

NO MORE HEROES

One of the points that stories like The Batman toy with is that you only get super villains if you start with superheroes. This is a thesis which has been impossible to test,

until now.

Of the many crimes against humanity committed so far by the social networking site MySpace the most egregious is The World Superhero Registry.

Which proudly proclaims itself "...a forum and resource for the REAL LIFE SUPERHERO COMMUNITY.." The site has dozens of biographies with photos of wannabe and neverbeen folk, listing their names, whether they are 'active', tips such as 'how to build a net gun', if their exploits have been covered in the media and even their superhero organisation such as Black Monday or The Vixens of Velour (okay I made the last one up, but they do have a Vixens of Valour group).

As long as you could look at this as a bunch of cosplay fanatics who just took it a bit too seriously then fine. But now a 21year old calling himself Shadowhare has gone and set up the Alliance of Heroes to help defend the good citizens of that hot bed of crime .....Cincinnati.

I've never been to Cincinnati, but I can't believe it deserves this



The first stirrings of opposition came from 'the Consortium of Evil' who offered a $10 bounty for the Shadowhares secret identity. Then came R.O.A.C.H

Ruthless Organisation Against Citizen/Chubby Heroes.

Whose leader the mysterious The Potentate, check it out here, has stated the removal of these superheroes is the first step "towards the total end game of world domination" I hope he finished with a maniacal laugh. It's all about standards people.

So which whould you rather team up with

or

Saturday, May 9, 2009

Famous Last words

Today is the 9 May in 1864 during the American civil war in at the battle of Spotsylvania
union General John Sedgwick digusted at the way his men were, quite rightly it turns out taking cover, was heard to exclaim

"They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance.."

on soldier who responded to this that he preferred to duck when being shot at, even from a great distance.

To this the general replied "all right man go to your place" just as an enemy sharp-shooter took him out.

So in recognition of 9 MAY as stupid last thing to say day here a few more



"More Light" by Goethe a German poet, novelist, philosopher, and scientist.

" Shoot Straight you bastards" - Lt Harry Moran to the firing squad about to execute him during the Boer war.

"Here is the German heart" - by the last of the "Schillschen officers" - a group of eleven Prussian officers executed on the Schillschen Field in Wesel, Germany, by Napoleon's troops. I'd like to think he was pointing at it at the time to assist aiming.

"The fog is rising" - Emily Dickinson a famous tragic.

"18 straight whiskies I think thats a record" - Dylan Thomas

"Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something." - Pancho Villa

and a personal favourite

"I wish I had time for one more bowl of chilli" - Kit Carson

and to end this day I suggest we all enjoy the following










Wednesday, May 6, 2009

See I told you

Hats off to the Zombiehunters tech team that pulled this one off.

The attention to detail is superb.

Click here

Monday, May 4, 2009

Its War of the World WITH ZOMBIES

I’m sticking by my review on Amazon of Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, this book is a million times better than the original.

It seems that enough folk were as hot as I was for a literary mash up that includes zombies to earn, what is known in the biz as Elephant bucks for the small publishing press Quirk books. As of this week its 10th on the New York Times paper back trade fiction bestseller list, #15 on Amazon and according to the trade mag Publisher’s Week Quirk has more than 120,000 copies in print.

So is it a surprise to anyone that publishers are scrambling to get out more of these literary mash-ups?

Of course the author Seth Grahame-Smith has been handed a sack of cash by Grand Central Press, reputed to be over half a million, to write Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. This may address one of the concerns Flinthart raised in his review about “Grahame-Smith is so concerned with mirroring the original material that the impact of his ‘Now With Added Zombies’ version is all but lost” as there is no such detailed original text.

It doesn’t end there because Coscom Entertainment have released The War of the Worlds: H.G. Wells's Classic Plus Blood, Guts and Zombies. How cool is that!

From Amazon
The invasion begins . . . and the dead start to rise. There's panic in the streets of London as invaders from Mars wreak havoc on the living, slaying the populace with Heat-Rays and poisonous clouds of black smoke. Humanity struggles to survive against technology far beyond its own, meeting fear and death at every turn. But that's not the only struggle mankind must face. The dead are rising from their graves with an insatiable hunger for human flesh. Friends, neighbours and loved ones lost to the war of the worlds are now the enemy and the Earth is forever changed. It's kill or be killed, if you want to survive, otherwise you might become one of the walking dead yourself.

These sounds like pitches that come up during a game of ‘Grave Robbers from outer space’.

From Z-man games it pays a tongue-in-cheek homage to the Horror and Sci-Fi B-Movies we all love love to hate…or hate to love. Players are making a B-Movie by playing Characters, Props, and Locations in their movie and sending Creatures to attack the other players' movies in order to kill off their Characters. With cards like “You’ve seen her breasts so her character must die” or “Cabin in the woods – did you leave the door open”. When Roll the Credits is played, the player with the most points wins!

I can only hope this trend for mash ups continues. I’d always though that TV series should have cross overs -like Firefly meets Star Trek, or Lost characters wander into Law & Order. Zombies of course remain an untapped resource. Hamlet’s father as a walking undead or imagine the Hunt for Red October with nazi zombies rising from the bottom of the sea.

Any you’d like to see?