Looks great to me. A few random thoughts:
Stetsons are cool. Nice repeat of the fez gag 
No clips of Mark Sheppard, awwww 
Matt Smith with a beard? A first for the Doctor?
But most interesting for me:
The return of the mysterious not-TARDIS from last year. VERY pleased to see that plot thread wasn’t forgotten about as many (including me) had feared.
After all these months, the identity of the mysterious, cloaked figure that’s been masterminding threats across the Green Lantern books is finally revealed in the new issue of Green Lantern, and it doesn’t disappoint.
Lets get the big revelation out of the way. Largely because I’m tired of referring to the “mysterious, cloaked figure”. Its Krona, the rogue Maltusian scientist who attempted to learn the forbidden secrets of the universe and unleashed entropy. An act that drove the Maltusians to eventually become the Guardians of the Universe.
Krona’s since returned numerous times, being a galactic-level threat in the DCU, when he’s involved, things are bad. He was last seen in Trinity, although the way that series resolved would raise questions about how he’s come back. Its possibly just being ignored. There’s also Krona’s unfortunate shrinking. Having used “Maltusian Evolution Tapestries” (a horrible line to justify his bandaged appearance) to repair his body, he appears to have shrunk down and taken on the form of a Guardian. Its a move that sort of makes sense, given his link to them, to have him more directly appear as an evil Guardian, but on the other hand, Krona’s such a strong, established villain that changing him in this way does feel a little odd. It does seem like Geoff Johns has made the decision to re-establish Krona as an “evil Guardian” and avoid (but perhaps not ignore) his actual history as a Maltusian (if that’s the right term).
There’s no explanations for the manacles either, but I imagine they’ll get to that next month when Krona no doubt fills us in on his dastardly scheme
Of course, regardless of how he looks, the reveal of Krona does work well. He’s a long-time Green Lantern threat with a solid connection to the Guardians. Here he claims to have been the original keeper of the entities, and that might tie in with a mystery that’s lingered since the Agent Orange plotline. We knew that someone other than Larfleeze had created the Orange battery and temple, and at the time many speculated that it might have been Krona. The reveal of Krona being the one going after the entities makes perfect sense, since its believable he’d have known of their existence while he was on Maltus. He’s old enough, and was a scientist.
And now using Parallax, he’s lured out Adara and Proselyte meaning he’s now collected more than half of the entities (and may soon have Ophidian as well, since we know he was contacting Hector Hammond previously). I’m hoping the New Guardians arc isn’t going to now quickly resolve this threat, and I’m assuming Krona and his capture of the entities will be a key threat in War of the Green Lanterns.
The only other main thing that leapt out at me from the issue was the Hal/Flash-Parallax battle. It rattled along quite quickly, but the only moment that seemed a bit strange was when Hal challenged Parallax to repossess him and free Barry. There’s an implication in the scene that Parallax may be in some way afraid of Hal, being the host that not only escaped him (ignoring the Spectre’s help), but who also freed Kyle. I guess it sort of makes sense, but given that Parallax is supposed to be fear manifest, the idea that he’d be scared of one lone Green Lantern would seem to weaken the character to me. Krona does also point out that Parallax wouldn’t be able to control Hal anyway, as Hal’s resistant to his influence, having been possessed previously, so I have to wonder if the same would be true of Kyle. Its just a little moment that starts to lean towards “look how awesome Hal is”, that I’m always wary about as it always strikes me as forcing Hal into the position of being the “coolest” of the Earth Green Lanterns.
Regardless, I’m really, really hoping once this is done, we don’t see any of these entities again for a good while. Parallax in particular, I make no bones about being bored of, and he’s lost a lot of the menace he previously had through his last few appearances.
Moaning aside, much like last issue I was pretty happy with events as this New Guardian story finally moved to a conclusion. And I really loved the little tie in to GLC with Sinestro getting the call about Kyle and the Weaponer. I do like those little connections between the books.
I’m looking forward to seeing what happens with Krona next month. I’ve maybe not been keen on the drawn out structure of this story (although individual parts have been good) but seeing how its all going to play into War of the Green Lanterns, and next month’s inevitable focus on Krona should be interesting. If nothing else, Geoff usually excels at issues focusing on the villains.
Star Trek Online Season 3 has now officially launched on Holodeck (the live server).
For those that don’t know, in Star Trek Online “Seasons” are the descriptions of the large content update patches that all MMOs wheel out from time to time in order to spruce up the game, add new features, and squash some bugs. In Star Trek Online though, they work a little differently, serving as a banner for a portion of the game’s lifespan. So while Season 3 may have started with the large update that hit yesterday, it continues until the launch of Season 4, as there’s more content to come as part of season 3, that’s still undergoing some final testing and tweaking.
Unlike a lot of these large updates MMOs see (and indeed seasons 1 and 2 of STO), new content was not a big part of the Season 3 release. Usually you might expect to see new zones open up in the game, and new missions available to be played, but here the developers had been pretty up front that instead for Season 3, the focus was going to be on polish.
Its no secret that Star Trek Online had a bumpy launch. A lot of people suspect it was rushed out of the door early, with some content lacking, and other aspects of the game lacking proper attention. Its a launch that dogged the game for some time, and over the course of seasons 1 and 2, these issues were slowly addressed, bringing in some Klingon PvE content, rolling out difficulty options and a death penalty, and introducing a load of new missions, including the recent, highly successful weekly missions. So despite that rough launch, the game has come on in leaps and bounds.
However there will still aspects of the game that were obviously bugging the developers, and with that in mind, and the game looking much healthier in terms of its content, they obviously felt it was time to sort those aspects out. And with season 3, while there may be no new missions (unless you’re playing a Klingon), its clear the love that’s gone into the changes.
For me, there’s several main areas of focus. One is immediately clear to all players, and that’s Sector Space. Sector Space is the view of the game where you fly from space sector to space sector, travelling to systems within those sectors in order to complete missions. The original version of sector space (see left) came under a lot of criticism. Its graphics had a grid transposed over space, with markers coming up from the “floor” to each planet. I didn’t mind it too much (I rationalised it as an Astrometrics view), however a lot of players felt it detracted from the immersion in the game. The new version of sector space however, brings a very noticeable revamp.
Firstly, all of sector space has been darkened. The over-lit view used previously is now absent, with most of the lighting now coming from any stars you pass on your travels. There’s now a toggle switch as well for switching Astrometrics on or off. Switching it on provides a similar view to before. While still darkened, a grid becomes visible. Switching it off, and those grids and markers are hidden. The end result gives you much more a feeling of flying through the vastness of space. As you approach systems, stars start as small dots, before getting larger and eventually you can view the planets surrounding them, and an info box pops up to give you information about the system, as well as any previous options to enter the system or continue a mission. Another nice visual tweak is when moving through this revamped sector space, you see stars streak past, like the familiar effect seen in the series whenever the Enterprise (or Defiant or Voyager) was travelling at warp.
Previously, where stations such as Deep Space Nine were shown in a highlighted, translucent way, again they’ve been changed, so they’re now rendered as complete objects in sector space. So as you approach the station, there’s a feeling that you’re genuinely flying up to it, again as opposed to some kind of astrometric or tactical view from a computer terminal. Specific areas of sector space, such as the Mutara Nebula, Great Bloom or Badlands have had effects added to them. Before these were normal systems you approached and entered. Now as you approach, the view of sector space shifts to reflect the environment of the stellar anomaly. The changes are all geared to shift the feeling from some impersonal computer display to give you more of a feeling of directly controlling your ship as it travels through space, and its superbly done.
The next major change that’s really grabbed me has been crafting. Crafting has always been something many ignored in STO. Its based around anomalies that are scanned in space and on planet surfaces. Gathering up these anomalies meant they could be spent in Memory Alpha upgrading basic pieces of equipment. All sounds good on the surface, however the types of equipment that could be upgraded were quite limited, and generally you found yourself creating loads of things you didn’t need, in order to gain the crafting experience required to produce something you did genuinely want. For me, and a lot of players, crafting became resigned to being end game content. Something new to try and max out at Vice Admiral purely for fun, unlike other MMOs where crafting is a key part of your character’s development.
Season 3 aims to address these issues directly. The previous distinctions between “Physical Sciences”, “Technology” etc tiers are removed, with items moved into the more logical groupings of “Personal Weapons, Ship Weapons, Ship Devices and the like. The number of items available has also been drastically increased. Now almost any combination of weapon or device type you can want appears. This is the first part to making crafting relevant. For example, previously when I hit maximum level, the weapons I could craft were no use. The only beam arrays available were Polaron, and I use Phasers. Now, whether you use phasers, polaron or tetryon arrays the option is there. Likewise for the different types of consoles, shields, torpedoes, kits. Whatever you could need. Purple “very rare” gear is also now available (previously it was only the rare, blue gear you could craft up to), making use of the rare particle traces introduced into the game in season 2.
The only restrictions I’ve noticed seem to come with the Mark XI gear. There, for example, only normal shields are available, as opposed to covariant (my shield of choice), regenerative or any of the others). However I think this is still reasonable, as players need to have some high end gear that is only available through playing the wider game (in this case, to get emblems to be exchanged for the highest end equipment). Aside from that, the developers have restricted phasers and disruptors to Federation and Klingons respectively, presumably to add a bit of distinctiveness to the two factions’ crafting.
The other major improvement was the removal of needing a base item to upgrade. Seen as a money-sink, it was another way that crafting only became possible properly at higher levels, as you needed the cash to outlay on something to craft, and unless you’re a pretty clued up player, energy credits can be scarce at lower levels.
Instead, now the basic anomalies (of which, most players amass a huge amount of) are used to create schematics. So if you want to create a new ship phaser, you’ll need so many anomalies, plus a ship weapon schematic in order to create it. Again, I think this is definitely a change for the better. Now lower level characters who’ve managed to build up a supply of anomalies can craft some better equipment for their ships without worrying about their dwindling energy credits.
I’ve been a massive fan of this revamp. Its really turned crafting into something exciting and relevant to characters as they level up throughout the game. And the hints of future improvements, tying in with the crew system being designed for season 4 sound like something to really look forward to.
Klingons as well, continue to benefit from each knew season release. In this season, Klingon tricorders have finally been upgraded to detect destructible mission objectives, that are common in their PvE content. Previously it was only objects that could be interacted with (scanned etc) that they would detect, like the Federation tricorders. This is a great quality of life change for making Klingon missions a bit easier.
Klingons also now have access to crafting, like the Federation only more disruptor-focussed. And they’ve also got several new daily “sortie” missions opened up to them which they can play to raid Federation transports and outposts for more data samples for use in crafting. All these kinds of changes we’ve seen over the last few releases really make me want to get back to my Klingon and start levelling him up again, and take advantage of the fact I can now upgrade my ship through crafting.
But these are only some of the initial changes introduced with the launch of Season 3. And so, since this has gotten really quite long, I’ll take a break, and talk about the upcoming content currently being trialled on the public test server, including the much-anticipated Foundry for user-generated missions.
The offiial teaser trailer for the upcoming Thor movie was released last night by Marvel
I must admit, from the extended preview that appeared earlier, I wasn’t too sure about this film, but the teaser trailer’s got me much more excited.
There’s certainly no arguing with the quality of the talent working on the film (still can’t quite believe Kenneth Branagh’s directed it), and the trailer looks pretty action packed. I’ve always believed that Thor as a character would be a bit of a hard sell to the general movie audiences, but this is looking like fun.
I’ve been really getting behind on my blogging lately, but out of everything I’m reading at the moment, there’s one franchise that’s grabbing me like no other. Batman.
Now, the Return of Bruce Wayne series really did suffer. Its release schedule ended up all over the place, and it felt like every issue was a hodge podge of art. I don’t really know what went on behind the scenes, but its a shame that this aspect of Grant Morrison’s run seemed to fall apart a bit.
But then we neared the final issue. Bruce was returning back to the present, while over in Batman and Robin, Doctor Hurt (from the Batman RIP storyline) had resurfaced and was causing major problems for Dick and Damian, attempting to complete his satanic ritual, shooting Dick and attempting to open the box Bruce encountered during his time jumping.
The reveal though of the mysterious box’s contents were a fantastic punch-the-air moment. At the height of Doctor Hurt’s success, the box is opened to reveal a simple note: “Gotcha”. And then the scene shifts to show Bruce, back in his Batman costume, behind them ready to face Hurt. Despite the delays that seemed to blight Bruce’s return, the brilliance of this moment shifted them into insignificance.
The conclusion to Return of Bruce Wayne was then a real treat, especially for those that had enjoyed Final Crisis, as everything is revealed that neatly pulls together Batman RIP, Final Crisis, the Return of Bruce Wayne and the entire Doctor Hurt saga. Its a masterpiece of a comics run as far as I’m concerned, and one of the few that I’d love to own in its entirety in trade form just so I could read it all through properly and fully appreciate the detail.
Even the satellite tie-ins that turned up prior to the final issues, The Road Back, I found to be great reads. Granted, I never picked up all of them (the Outsiders for instance held little interest to me), but I did buy the majority, and while they had the slight whiff of an editorial mandate to boost the interest and profit in Bruce’s return, they were all really enjoyable books.
Featuring Bruce taking on a new identity, operating from the shadows while silently catching up with everything he’d missed while he was gone, evaluating Dick and Damian’s partnership, checking in on the new Batgirl (a character Bruce never had a brilliant relationship with, so his acceptance of her made for a nice scene) all while an underlying storyline of Vicki Vale’s attempts to expose the Bat-family’s identities ties everything together, these issues provided a great accompaniment to the main books.
The continuity with Grant Morrison’s books might’ve be a little shaky, but none-the-less it was a really enjoyable part of Bruce’s return and very well written, and these titles all showed off an aspect that’s a big part of Grant’s newly-returned Bruce Wayne. He’s realised just how big a family he now has surrounding him. How he’s not alone. There’s a clear move away from the overly-brooding, anti-social Batman of the past, and while its been tried before (Bruce Wayne: Fugitive) there’s a real feeling that this time its going to stick.
And just when you think Grant Morrison would be saying “ok, I’ve told my giant Bat-epic, time to move on”, instead he’s thrown himself headlong into the next chapter of the Bat-family, launching Batman Incorporated, which features Bruce travelling the globe, training other heroes in his skills to take his war on crime global. Its a really nice play on the usual part of Bruce’s backstory of him making a similar journey in the past to learn those skills. Plus, much like with the return of Steve Rogers over at Marvel, it serves to make the status quo upon his return less predictable. In the case of Captain America, Steve happily surrendered the role to Bucky who he’d seen as having earned it (Steve now heading the latest equivalent to S.H.I.E.L.D.). In the case of Batman, this new direction has allowed DC to leave Dick and Damian as the Batman and Robin of Gotham, with Bruce pleased that his city is under their care. Plus Grant is laying some elements for the future of the storyline, as its being hinted that during his time travel, Bruce has seen a specific threat that he’s quietly preparing for (so perhaps still that hint of the old secret-keeping Bruce is left after all).
All in all, I can’t praise this epic run more, and I really encourage people to check it out. There’s various trades of the run available, starting with Batman and Son, that saw Talia Al Ghul reveal Damian’s existance to Bruce.
After being so brilliantly teased last month, this issue sees the Kyle versus Sinestro confrontation that’s been building for a while.
When you think about it, despite being Hal’s villain, there’s a lot of personal history between these two characters. Sinestro had Kyle’s mother killed and set him up to be possessed by Parallax and used against his fellow GLs in the Sinestro Corps War. Kyle, it could be argued, was the downfall of Sinestro’s most ambitious scheme, when he used Parallax against Hal, leading to the destruction of the Corps during Emerald Twilight. Only for Kyle to become the last Green Lantern, eventually uncover Parallax’s existence and aid in Hal Jordan’s resurrection (being the one who retrieved Hal’s body).
And of course, ever since it was revealed that Kyle’s new girlfriend, Soranik Natu, was Sinestro’s daughter, it seemed inevitable that a confrontation was inevitable.
Taken on its own, I actually enjoyed the confrontation quite a bit. The rings are quickly dispensed with, which pleased me as I worried that Sinestro would beat down Kyle in a ring combat, establishing that not only is he so much better than Kyle, but implying that Hal is the only one who can go toe-to-toe with Sinestro in the ring slinging stakes (I much prefer the idea that the Earth Lanterns are all roughly equivalent with the ring). So when Kyle lost to Sinestro in a straight fist fight, it worked a lot better for me. Kyle of course got his “I was trained by Batman” moment, but overall I can buy the idea that Sinestro would be much more trained in hand-to-hand combat than Kyle (to be honest, I’d expect that Kyle’s hand-to-hand experience to be serviceable, but basic compared to some of the other heroes, given his background).
Perhaps the only issue in the conflict, is how much of the personal history between the characters is ignored. Sinestro killed Kyle’s mother. Sinestro also despises Kyle, seeing him as an unfit Green Lantern, something made worse when Kyle scarred him during Rebirth. None of this really came across at all. I could’ve at least appreciated a line from Kyle mentioning how much he was putting aside his personal feelings about Sinestro for the sake of helping Soranik. Kyle versus Sinestro could’ve easily taken up an entire issue, instead, while I thought what we got was well written, it perhaps showed a lack of knowledge of the (let’s be honest, recent) backstory to these characters.
Meanwhile Soranik is on Qward with the Weaponer, and we get a run down of his backstory, and their recent history, including Sinestro’s brutal takeover, forcing the Qwardians into slavery in order to make the Sinestro Corps rings. I must take my hat off to Tony Bedard, as I’m thoroughly enjoying the Weaponer as a new villain for the Corps. He’s got a pretty sympathetic backstory, and his hatred and vendetta against Sinestro is easily understandable. While he’s kidnapped Soranik, its clear he means her no actual harm, seeing her only as a way to get Sinestro to walk into a trap. However, now that Sinestro’s refused to help, and Kyle’s arrived with a team of his fellow Honour Guard, you have to wonder what he’ll do.
Overall, I still really enjoyed the issue. Ignoring the personal history between Kyle and Sinestro was definitely a let down, but what was there was enjoyable, and really the Sinestro thing came across as a bit of a side note in the issue. Hopefully its not something that’s finished though, as a proper Kyle versus Sinestro fight, that does properly take into account their past would be great to read.
I’m looking forward to seeing the GLs versus the Weaponer next issue, and seeing how this develops. He’s not really a bad guy in the strictest sense, so don’t think this’ll wrap up with the usual “smackdown then Sciencell”.
