Reilly2040's Blog

At long last, the much-delayed Legion of Three Worlds issue 4 is here. As with issue 3, despite the delays its still a good read, and there’s no denying that the detail George Perez is putting into his artwork is worth it. Despite the delays, there’s no hint that they’ve allowed the art to be compromised, and the issue is great to look at.

Picking up from where the last issue left off, everyone’s still in battle against Superboy Prime and the Legion of Supervillains.   However, with phase 1 of Brainiac 5′s plan complete, the newly resurrected Bart Allen is back in the game.

Hats off to Geoff Johns, in this series he’s been handed the fairly unpleasant task of trying to sort out the mess that was made of Bart during his Flash run.   Geoff has made the obvious choice of bringing back Bart as Kid Flash once again.  And in this issue he’s left with the thankless task of trying to provide a reason Bart came back as Kid Flash rather than his older self.  

(For the record, I will give the writers of Bart’s Flash run kudos for attempting to bring back elements of his Impulse run that had been ignored for a while – like Intertia – and you could see Bart’s impulsive nature was still there.  However the whole idea of replacing Wally with a super-aged Bart I think was just a bad plan from the start.  Wally was at his peak, and Bart had only recently become Kid Flash, so it was just pushing him into another role too soon.)

The explanation for Bart’s youthful return it has to be said, is pretty muddy, but as readers, we all know its essentially an excuse for something that creatively had to happen.  Essentially its to do with Bart’s tangle with Superboy Prime in the speedforce causing him to superage.  Brainiac 5 tells us that this superaging was like a cancer in Bart’s body that would’ve run unchecked until he’d have died anyway in a few months.  However, the lightning rod managed to capture Bart’s true essence, freed of the speedforce infection.    As I say, a bit muddy, but who cares, Bart’s back where he belongs.

The attention then flips back to phase 2 of Brainiac 5′s plan.  And here, while well written and drawn, I think the delays have probably hurt the book.   The upshot of the plan is the resurrection of Conner Kent, and this had been pretty much figured out months ago, helpfully aided by a spoilerific DC Nation showing art of Connor back in action (seriously, why does DC Nation keep spoiling big events?  Especially after the backlash over Dan Didio spilling the return of the multiverse).    If this book had been coming out monthly, then with events moving a lot faster, I think Connor’s return might’ve had a bit more impact for this reader.  Instead it felt more like reading a book in retrospect.  I already new Connor was coming back, so it was just the curiousity of how it actually happened.

I do like the manner of his resurrection though.  The use of the same pod that resurrected Superman was a nice touch, combined with the strand of Lex’s hair to aid the pod in regenerating Connor’s human side.   I will say though that I was sure that pod got smashed up in the Return of Superman (Superman burst out of it), however I guess its easy to file under “Super-robots fixed it” or “New Earth – Superman infact exited the pod gracefully”.

Regardless of complaints about delays and lost impact, I am incredibly glad to see these two characters back.  Both their deaths felt pretty needless at the time, especially with Teen Titans at its height, heavily involving both Bart and Connor.   Of course, the question for issue 5 will be, does Connor return with Bart?  We’ve not seen any sign of him in the current DCU yet, while we’ve seen Bart in Flash: Rebirth, and if Connor was back then you’d have expected to see him with the rest of the Teen Titans in that scene.  Now I’m assuming that Connor’s definitely coming back to the modern day, so I’m presuming the explanation will simply be that he stays behind for a while to help the Legion rebuild, and will return to the modern day in due course – presumably in the pages of whatever Superman book it is the Legion are due to appear in.   

The impact his resurrection will have on Cassie will be interesting to see.  And does this mean we could be looking at a Teen Titans relaunch?  I know I’d be keen to start collecting the book again with a line-up along the lines of Superboy, Wonder Girl, Kid Flash, Miss Martian, Blue Beetle and a few others.  Robin’s a bit of a question mark, but if Tim’s around as Red Robin, then chuck him into the mix as well.

Of course, I’ve not really talked much about the Legion stuff in this book yet.  As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not really a Legion fan, so if I’m being honest, big events like the reveal of Time Trapper’s true identity at the end are completely lost on me.  With three versions of two big superteams kicking around as well, I’m finding it hard to keep track of any particular characters.   However I will say that I’m enjoying the interplay between the three Brainiacs.

There’s a very interesting moment as well, where one of the Legionnaires instinctively turns the ground to Kryptonite beneath Superboy Prime and it affects Prime, much to his horror.   We know that Kryptonite only works on Kryptonians from the correct universe, so it looks like that particular version of the Legion is from Earth Prime, which should have interesting implications, especially Superboy Prime’s own reaction when its revealed.

While I’m still not really into the Legion, I will say this is an enjoyable series.  Its not a good jumping on point for the Legion at all, and from that point of view I don’t agree with the comments I’ve read online that this book should’ve been the main Crisis.  However there’s enough non-Legion stuff with Bart and Connor’s resurrections and Sodam Yat’s appearance to keep this non-Legion fan entertained.  In fact, I’d say its a testiment to the writer and artist that despite not being a Legion fan, I’m still picking this up.

DC Comics have posted up a new preview of the upcoming second issue of Flash: Rebirth on their official blog.  I love that variant cover

Its nice to see Mark Waid’s Savitar story being so heavily referenced so far in this series.  I’d figured his appearance in issue 1 would be more  a throwaway nod, however here we return to Savitar’s citadel, and see his accolytes and Lady Savitar reacting to his death.   It looks like his accolytes were killed off, but I wonder if this means Christina is going to come gunning for Barry?  Also I wonder if it means we’ll be seeing Johnny Quick turn up, since that was the story he was killed in.

Again, we see Geoff laying on the CSI aspects of Barry’s character, an aspect I’m very much enjoying, and something I think will be key towards making Barry interesting and bring something different to the Flash title.

I just got back from seeing the new Star Trek movie tonight (special advance preview showing ahead of its release next week), and thought I’d throw out a brief review. I’ll keep it spoiler free as the film’s not out yet though.

Its excellent.

J.J. Abrams has gathered an outstanding cast, and put together a film that, while it features a completely new take on classic Trek, it still feels familiar.  Thanks largely to a cast who capture their roles perfectly.  Zachary Quinto is note-perfect as Spock, and Karl Urban probably stole the film for me as McCoy.    However, its very much Chris Pine’s film.  And after watching him as Kirk, I really think this guy has a great career ahead of him.   He brings Kirks cocky swagger to life perfectly, and inbues the role with a lot of comedy as well.   There’s a dash of Harrison Ford as Han Solo or Indiana Jones to this Kirk, and it works brilliantly.

The film moves along at a cracking pace, with some top notch battle scenes  which thankfully still felt like Star Trek battles, ie more naval warfare with slow moving ships as opposed to something more Star Wars-like with the ships zipping around everywhere.

If I had any complaints about the film, it really comes down to the Enterprise itself.   As I mentioned previously I wasn’t keen on the redesign, and I have to say seeing the ship in action didn’t change my opinion at all.  There are several beauty shots throughout the film, but for me they backfired as I was just reminded of how much I dislike the changes.  The stardrive section just doesn’t work and would’ve been better left resembling the original movie-refit.   Fortunately where this film succeeds and has its focus, is the characters.

Its all fanboy niggles at the end of the day though.  This is an excellent film, and one that’ll hopefully breathe new life into the franchise.   The interesting thing about the showing I was in, was that it didn’t feel like there were a lot of Trekkies in the audience, and at the end of the film, everyone seemed to have enjoyed it, which I take as a very positive sign.  For the film to work, it needs to capture the general audience a lot more than the Trekkies, who’ll go see it anyway.

IGN have put up a preview of this week’s issue #40, and it looks great

Philip Tan’s artwork continues to shine in this storyline, and I love the scenes of the GLC arriving to clean up the Vega System, now that its no longer off limits.   The implications this will have with the Spider Guild should be interesting to see, although its now being made clear (Geoffconed) that the Spider Guild were just a cover for the real reason the GLC was staying out of the Vega System.

This is the really interesting aspect of this story arc.  We now know that the reason the GLC have stayed out of the Vega System is because its home to Larfleeze and the Orange Light.  Infact, in these preview pages one of the Guardians makes it clear that the reason this happened, is because the GLC were delivered a sound beating the last time they encountered the Orange Lanterns, before coming to the truce.

This is a very interesting statement to me.  That the Orange Lanterns are potentially that much more powerful than the Green Lanterns.   We know that the Guardians themselves also go to Okaraa, presumably to add extra firepower rather than just let the GLs get slaughtered again.   I’m guessing this is going to be where Hal’s blue ring will be vital as well.  Presumably once they meet up with Larfleeze, the fight is going to be pretty one-sided until Hal eventually finds his hope, activates the ring, and all the GLs in the area suddenly find their power boosted.   

Whether this will be enough to sway the Guardians towards the value of the blue light will be debatable, however it should mean that all the GLs present will realise that there’s a lot of benefit to be had in teaming up with the Blue Lanterns, even if the Guardians are against it.

I’m looking forward to the rest of the issue a lot.  Nice to see the preview is only 6 pages as well.  I’ve noticed the length of these previews (generally speaking, not just GL) has been steadily increasing for a while now, and I’d noticed that it was starting to impact my enjoyment of the books themselves.

Its interesting to notice the fuss that’s being kicked up as a result of the new Mission Architect in City of Heroes.

As I mentioned on Twitter the other day, there was a big anti-farming protest on Union over the weekend, that I was lucky enough to catch.  This kicked off because of the high volume of farming teams being created in Atlas Park, and the resulting constant “looking for farm team” messages in the Broadcast channel in that zone, combined with a general belief that its not playing the game properly.

The amount of XP that can be made from some of these farming missions is without a doubt obscene. Even my high-level character could gain 2 levels in just one run of a mission. People are managing to get from 1-50 in a matter of days by playing them.

However, the argument is, should they be stopped? If people want to farm their way through the game, missing out on story arcs, interesting zones and villains etc, then why not let them? They’re not hurting anyone are they?

For me, I’m not against a bit of farming now and again. I’d never use it as my main gameplaying though as its just dull and repetitive. It is however, a nice way of killing some of the grind which, as a casual player, could really bog things down.  However for the players who use it as their main style of play, I just wonder what the point is.   You get to 50 before you’ve blinked.  You won’t have gotten a feel for the tactics of your powers, learned the history of Paragon City or encountered the many diverse villain groups that litter the game.   Instead they’ve probably run through the same 2-3 missions countless times.  The same zone, the same villains.  Its just dull.   Unless your tanks miscalculate a pull there’s no sense of strategy or achievement.  They pull over a couple of groups, and everyone else just nukes the heck out of them.  There’s much less demand for a varied and proper team with the benefits that different classes can bring.

I do get tired of all the fuss over it though.  Take that protest.  While I appreciate the sentiment, what harm are the farmers really causing?  If people want to play like that, then let them. They’re off in the architect, in their own instanced missions, so they’re not griefing anyone. They’re missing out on most of the content, but that’s their choice. And it leaves the rest of the game area clear for people playing the main missions, RPing or whatever.   As a long term player of the game, I know that farming has always been around (the Synapse Taskforce used to be a favourite before the devs tweaked its first missions), or alternatively havock would be caused by one group pulling all the mobs in a particular zone to create one giant group for them to nuke.   If you happened to be hunting in that zone, you’d wonder where all the bad guys had gone, or if you were just wandering through at the wrong time, you’d get caught in the pull and annihilated (something the devs tried to fix by reducing the effectiveness of taunt).  Now all other players have to do is avoid the AE building in Atlas Park.

I’ll agree that the constant “looking for farm” spam on broadcast is annoying though. However so is the constant “Stop spamming broadcast with farming requests” spam. Hopefully the farming requests can get filtered into their own channel or something, or they’ll calm down in a few weeks once the fuss over the Architect’s farming missions has died down, or all the power levellers have gotten bored and left now they’ve got 30 level 50 characters.

The next move from the devs should be interesting. Do they stomp on the XP from architect missions as its spoiling the game experience, or do they leave it be, and just be happy that a load of subscribers have come back?  Especially with Champions Online due out soon, the competition in the Superhero -based MMO arena is about to take off.  

For myself, I hope its left alone.   While I may partake in the odd bit of farming in order to give certain characters who have stalled a boost, I’ll also happily hang around the AE buildings in other zones to build up my own missions.  My first as I’ve mentioned before is already published, and I’ve got some ideas for my second.  The power levellers and the like are always going to be around, so at least this keeps them contained and out of everyone else’s way.  Not to mention netting their subscription fees which is never a bad thing

Well, I took the plunge over the weekend and upgraded my laptop to the new Ubuntu 9.04.

Fortunately all seems to have gone smoothly. All the main stuff was working happily on reboot, even my wifi. I’m not sure what’s actually been changed in this release, so I’ll need to go through it more thoroughly at somepoint, but I really like the new theme on the login screen. The only downside is that I feel it makes the GTK theme used for the main desktop look a bit older by comparison. The darker theme now used for the login screen is a lot fresher.

The much-vaunted notification system is very nice indeed.  I’ve only had notifications relating to Pidgin so far, but the effect is really nice with a semi-transparent box in the top right of the screen appearing with the contact’s avatar and their status change or message.

My only comment is that it’d be nice to see other apps using it. Its not Ubuntu’s fault,and it is only a new system, so maybe it’ll be more heavily used as releases roll on, but having these nice pop-ups for Pidgin only draws attention to Skype and the like having pop ups appear on different parts of the screen and not looking as nice. It detracts from the integrated feel of the desktop, so I would like to see future versions of apps adopt it. That’s up to their developers though.

I blogged the other week about Digital Comics, and in particular about Iverse Media on the iPod Touch/iPhone (they’re also on Android and are planning on releasing a desktop client). One of the good things Iverse Media tend to do is offer the first issue of series for free on the App Store, as a taster. So, having discovered them, I picked up a load of the free issues to see if anything else took my fancy.

Atomic Robo grabbed me straight away. I’ve only read the first few issues, but it follows the adventures of an artificially intelligent robot, created in 1923 by Nikola Tesla. Set in the modern day, Atomic Robo fights various badguys, from evil Nazi scientists, to giant mutant ants.

What drew me to the series was the sense of humour. Robo is one of those characters who’s always quipping a la Spider-Man, but the humour extends to the situations he’s in as well, such as the second issue featuring Robo’s team having a scientific argument on the plane while Robo’s already jumped out and started stomping the giant ants.

Its a lot of fun, and definitely a series I’d recommend checking out. If you’ve got an iPhone or iPod Touch, the first issue is free, and subsequent issues are a bargain 59p. Can’t beat that for value.  And hopefully that desktop client will be available soon as well.

Well, as the counter on the right shows, the release of Ubuntu 9.04, codenamed Jaunty Jackalope is happening any time now.

As always, I’m excited to see what the new distribution has to offer over the previous version, however this time I find this tinged with caution, as previously my main installation was on the second disk of my desktop PC, so if the upgrade broke anything, I could happily reboot into Windows and keep using the machine until I got it fixed.

Now however, my main installation is my laptop, which is 100% Ubuntu. And as long term readers (both of them ) will know, I’ve had a tortured history getting my wifi to work (not necessarily getting the card’s drivers setup, more the authentication to my home network that kept failing).

So do I grab the new distro based on the fact that it worked in Intrepid, and since its all setup and working, it should survive the upgrade, or do I hold off in the fear that the upgrade will knacker my network connectivity?

Odds on, I’m going to crack and risk the upgrade. Realistically the only thing that’s given me hassle in the past has been the wifi, so if that breaks, then I can switch to Ethernet to try and get it fixed (or pull files off the laptop prior to wiping and reinstalling).

Look forward to an “I broke my laptop” post tomorrow

IGN have put up the solicits for the first month (July) of Blackest Night, and its looking very, very good.

A very interesting aspect to these solicits its the two issues of GL in July. Hopefully this is a sign of Doug Mahnke having had a headstart on the art duties, and we know from final Crisis that he can produce good work in a hurry (something that’ll probably be key to GL during all this). I’m liking the look of his two covers a lot. He’ll probably not replace Ivan Reis as my favourite GL artist, but his artwork’s great, and he’s a fast worker, which will count for a lot given GL’s tendency to hit delays.

I’m guessing these issues pick up straight after what we’ve seen in Blackest Night #0, as that started with Barry and Hal at Bruce’s grave, and here we see them battling the Black Lantern J’onn by that same grave (and Black Hand there as well, although I’m guessing he escapes after issue #43 thanks to the arrival of the Zombie Martian Manhunter). I’m also interested to see that Peter Tomasi’s story arc with Mongul taking over the Sinestro Corps will be coming to a head in the main GL title, with the solicits teasing Sinestro vs Mongul.

 GLC meanwhile is the usual one issue that month (helps keep GL ahead in the numbering ) and its dealing with the aftermath of the Sciencell riots, with a new law being enacted (something that’s not as exciting as it used to be. I’m just sitting wondering what dumb decision the Guardians will make this time), and hints that its going to have serious implications for the Honour Guard Lanterns Kyle and Guy. The cover seems intriguing with Kilowog holding (offering?) a load of Green Lantern rings. Perhaps a sign of the heavy losses the GLC has taken recently, between the Sinestro Corps, Red Lanterns, and people quitting due to dumb laws?   Although given the blood on his hand, I’m guessing these Lanterns didn’t quit.  Despite the Guardian’s feelings towards Ganthet, with the hits their numbers have taken over the last year, they’re going to end up very glad of the Blue Lanterns help by the end of this.

Finally, and possibly what I’m looking forward to the most out of these solicits, is the Tales of the Corps specials. The solicits give us an idea of what stories to expect, and I’m really looking forward to seeing Saint Walker’s pilgrimage, and our first introduction to the Indigo Lanterns.

Well, I’ve now had a chance to play the City of Heroes Mission Architect.  Both creating my own short story arc (called the Supplier if anyone fancies a look) and playing some missions others have created.

I’m incredibly impressed.

The development team have managed to put together something that is both easy to use, and very powerful.  With no real tutorial I quickly went in and built up a story arc, consisting of three missions which included a custom-designed group of villains (of all ranks up to Elite Boss), all with their own look and powers.  One of the missions involves finding certain objects in the map and defeating a boss, whereas another involves you rescuing a rookie hero (also custom designed for the story with his own powers) who will then follow and help you for the rest of the map.

Of course, you don’t have to go with your own characters, and dropping in any of the pre-existing characters and groups is also a snap.   Levels let you choose from any of the existing map layouts, from any of the designs used in the game.

As well as the usual rewards of XP, influence and prestige, when running missions created in the architect you also amass “tickets”, which can also be exchanged for goodies, including the ability to unlock additional maps, costume parts etc for building your own missions (for example, full capes aren’t available from the outset for your custom characters, but can be bought with architect tickets and accessible from then on).  Don’t be worried though.  From the outset, there’s more than enough flexibility in the options available to build unique characters and missions.   Its just that these add even more.

Of course, as expected, there’s a good few missions where people have just picked an open map and chucked in loads of high-level minions to be farmed for rapid XP.   They’re not particularly original or well thought out maps, but they do what they set out to.  Hopefully though once there’s a good few of these caught on, we’ll see less of them overall, and the truely creative maps will start to shine through, with people building up interesting story arcs, filled with crazy characters.