Drunken Comics Rage

I have a lot to cover here, and most of it isn't particularly interesting.  But, I'm a bit between some comics reading I've completed and haven't fully pondered yet and comics reading I have lined up; there's been enough going on here without me that I wanted to comment on some of it.

Is it just me, or was it way freaking cool that Bryan J.L. Glass, author of Mice Templar, took the time to respond to some of Ghost's thoughts on Mice Templar #4?  Thank you, sir, for honoring our wee site with your time and thoughts.  We have fun here at DCR, and a lot of that fun is based on raging, drunkenly, against comics we think qualify as dumb (among many other things).  But…in the course of that, it is too easy to forget that dumb comic book was born in the creative soul of someone who may be damned proud of the idea, the effort, and the result.  The anonymity of the Internet allows for exaggerated, uninformed, and public criticism, often with no consequence and without also allowing for reasoned response; this can drive me irrationality insane (wait, can you be driven rationally insane?) yet hypocritically here I am on occasion hacking on comic book-y stuff in anonymity.  There's a lesson here somewhere, if I'm clever enough to puzzle it out.

As DVO mentioned, I am a longtime City of SupaNerdery player.  How long?  I dunno; I have the base teleporter and Nemesis Staff vet rewards, if that helps any.  A long bloody time, particularly as measured against my involvement with other MMOGs.  I did UO until EQ rolled around.  I feel like I played EQ for an eternity, but that is influenced by the sheer pain and suffering that game induces.  I remember Dark Age of Camelot with some fondness, and Horizons holds a special little place in my heart.  I poked around Asheron's Call, and I think I logged into Anarchy Online twice.  I've got a couple months of Guild Wars under my belt, and a bit more than that with WoW.  And Ghost and I played a whole lotta Dungeons and Dragons Online; I'm real gawddamn sure we'd still be there if it hadn't gotten so bloody hard to find stuff to do.  I don't want to spend too much time on that, but I'm still pretty bitter.  I get that D&D is a group game; why can't we have NPCs to hire in the online edition?  Do you HAVE to be in a guild?  Do you have to stand around and wait, and wait, and beg, for a cleric and a thief to round the group out?  That game, IMO, might have the least amount of sheer content of any MMOG, but I was FINE replaying that shit over and over, inching up the difficulty, etc…but we couldn't find groups.  Ghost and I, with another buddy, unwilling or unable to deal with a PUG (pick up group), would creep through dungeons way under our level just to PLAY the damned game because it was SO FUN.  And yet…cancelled.  Guild Wars gives you functional NPCs…why can't DDO?  *sigh*

But there I went and spent more time talking about DDO than I wanted.  Bitter.

Anyway, I came back to City of Heroes, largely just to play with these other idiots, because I get a huge amount of fun from that.  But, why did I ever leave?  I got bored.  The play mechanics were getting old for me, and I felt like I was slogging through repetitive missions that sorta had no point.  But…I was done with the frustrations of DDO, and getting into City of Villains was enough of a potentially intriguing new avenue for me that I came back to don the super jammies again.

And I'm glad I did.  City of Villains felt very new, with more maps, better mission stories, updated graphics, etc.  Not to mention allow me to exercise my evil nature.  And the dev staff have made some big changes to City of Heroes as well, in terms of quality of life stuff and upgraded content (ala the vanguard missions, the time travel stuff, etc).  And with the recent expansion of the dev team and some exciting things coming up in Issue 12, it could be a pretty interesting next six months or so for the franchise and its players.

I have my Mastermind alt up to the very edge of 44th level, which is staggeringly higher than any alt I've ever had in any previous game…though that may be as much because of the ease of playing with a Mastermind as any statement on how much CoX is holding my attention.  We'll see how it goes from here; Age of Conan looms, although my enthusiasm has cooled a bit for it.

And finally…I can't pass up a comment on DVO's Thor post.  Boy was he right.  I almost can't talk about this; if you recall from my list of favoritestest heroes of all time, Thor was way, way up there.  So while I love the concept of a Thor movie, and I'm thrilled with the direction of the comic book movies these days, I'm scared to death of a Thor movie.  It seems too big and crazy (he's the freaking God of Thunder!), and on top of that, there isn't the mass appeal of Spiderman, Batman, Superman, or even the Hulk.  And as DVO discussed…who do you cast?  And I can't be rational in discussing this, I'm too close to it…if its not a selection that blows me away (like Downey Jr. for Tony Stark) I'm immediately setting myself on fire.  I'm just resigned to it.

Filed under: Comic Movies & TV, Games!, Monkey Rage