Why Won't You Die....Mike?

Haven't done one of these in a while, and truth be told I don't really tend to dwell on candidates for these posts. I like to throw a movie on, and let the characters inspire me. Some I had in mind when I first started doing these, others have come along since or I've been reminded of since. Case in point, Mike from The Blair Witch Project. I normally watch this one again around the month of October, but this year it slipped from the rotation, and I ended up just recently watching it. While you could in fact argue that the entirety of the cast is annoying as hell, you would have one hell of a hard time convincing me that even the combined annoyance of the other two even so much as hold a candle to Mike.

Mike, the doughy, sporadically body haired, super whiny sound guy from the little film school project in the middle of the woods. This fat bastard did absolutely NOTHING but complain from the beginning. Hell, he even started complaining before they got lost in the woods! The fuck man? Nobody twisted your cellulitis coated food shoveler into coming. When they do get lost? This dickhead decided that since he couldn't read the map, nobody could, and kicked it into the river. I don't give a shit how lost I am, if there's a map of the area, and you kick it in the river, prepare to be drowned in said river.

I absolutely hated this guy from the very first time I saw the movie in the theater. Going in, of course, we all knew that all three of them were going to die, but Mike just couldn't go fast enough for me. Just the very sight of him annoys me. I hate the stupid, smug look on his face when he initially begins complaining, and I especially hate that he basically has that same look on his face when he's supposed to be terrified for his life.

While I do enjoy watching him standing in the corner at the very end, waiting his turn, as the second most annoying person in the film, Heather, shrieks his name over, and over, and over, and over like some sort of mutant offspring spawned from a pterodactyl/banshee mating session, falls victim to the witch, I can't help but feel cheated that I didn't get to witness Mike's demise. Inference simply isn't enough for a character as annoying as this fat fuck.

Friday Night Drive-In

Real quick, I want to give a shout-out to my friend Hardy, the one and only person who's ever actually publicly admitted to enjoying my Drive-In posts! This one's for you, buddy! There's rampant nudity and guys in rubber suits getting all rapey! Sounds like the perfect flick for the Drive-In, no?

"Goddamn, it's a Salmon."

Got a few things worth mentioning this week, so let's not dawdle with this normally mostly useless opening paragraph...

So it seems a Necromancer has decided to "fix" the state of our fair nation by resurrecting dead presidents. Captain America is first on the scene when Harry S. Truman emerges from his grave, and promptly decapitates him with his shield. Not content with having headlines such as "Decapitain America beheads President Truman" on the newsstands, SHIELD decides to resort to drastic measures to clean up this zombie president mess, and hires Deadpool. See folks, this is the kind of shit I want to read about in Deadpool. This new series, part of Marvel's "NOW" campaign which is basically just yet another renumbering scam similar to DC's "New 52", is written by comedian Brian Posehn and Gerry Duggan, with art from a personal favorite, Tony "I drew The Walking Dead way better" Moore. I was skeptical of how much I would enjoy the story from an unproven writer like Posehn, but if you tell me Tony Moore draws a book, I'm going to buy it, simple as that. If this first issue is an indicator though, Posehn and Duggan seem to know the Merc with a Mouth pretty well, and this should be one hell of a fun series.

Elected Gotham City officials are showing up as the victims of violent crimes all over the city. Nothing new for Gotham, right? Sure, but this time there's a twist, they're all dressed in home made Batman costumes. You just know the Joker is behind it, and he is, but there's no traces of any kind of poison, gas or otherwise, and the victims only show signs of having been murdered by the circumstances they were found in. So, how is Joker convincing perfectly normal, upstanding political members of Gotham City to dress as Batman and get themselves killed at the hands of the likes of Killer Croc? Good shit here from B. Clay Moore, whose only other work I can remember reading is an Image mini-series named "Battle Hymn" from a few years ago, and some issues of JSA Classified. I never read Hawaiian Dick, but now I'm thinking maybe I should. Of course you could've sold this book to me without words in it, as Ben Templesmith handled the art, and I basically worship at the altar Templesmith. I flat out love the dude's art, period. Don't care what he's drawing, I'm buying.

Valiant's resurrecting yet another of their properties, this time giving Shadowman a new series. Unlike the other relaunches so far though, this one seems to be taking the character in a little bit of a different direction, and most certainly has given him a new look. Gotta say, while I did read the old Shadowman series, it wasn't my favorite Valiant book. This new one though, is off to a good start, and I'm interested to see where Justin Jordan and Patrick Zircher will be taking it. Hard to talk much about the issue as it's mostly setup, as #1's tend to be, but I'm confident that it's going be great, based off the Valiant relaunch's record, if nothing else.

The newest in Dark Horse's creator-owned batch, Colder finally arrived in my pull box. In all honesty, the cover art alone sold me on this. Paul Tobin writing just added fuel to the fire. This one is also hard to really talk about, not because nothing happens, but because what does happen doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense yet. The book opens with an explosion and fire at a mental institution. In the chaos, a character named Declan is visited from a weird looking guy that emerges from a portal named Nimble Jack, who tells him that he will become "colder". Fast forward a few years later, and Declan is a medical marvel who is a live-in patient of a nurse named Reece. While technically alive, Declan is basically an invalid who doesn't do much more than sit in a chair and stare at the wall. His body temperature has been slowly dropping for years,  with no explanation, and currently sits at 46 degrees. Not sure where this one's going, or what to make of Nimble Jack quite yet, demon? Imp? I dunno. All I know is he's a weird fucker, who apparently eats souls, and I fucking loved this first issue. Can't wait for issue 2.

Teddy / Popularity Killer

I think I've mentioned this before, but I'm a huge slacker when it comes to short films. I hear lots of good stuff, but almost never bother to watch. I've been getting better though, and recently watched a couple from Slasher Studios based on recommendations.

The slasher genre seems to be the favorite among most indie and short film makers (with zombie being a close second), which makes sense I guess as it's fairly easy to find some sort of mask to throw on one of your buddies and have him stalk around murdering other friends/family members/etc. Teddy is an homage to the slasher films of yore (the 80's) and features just about every single slasher cliche known to man. The main difference between it and those older films? It's run time is 11 minutes, versus 80 or more. The end result is actually a pretty enjoyable little movie. It's not ground breaking, but the kills are decent, and I do love me a deranged killer in a mask. Check it out...

Popularity Killer I basically felt the same about, although I didn't like quite as much. Stop me if you've seen this before... a popular girl at the local high school is murdered, school is cancelled, and a group of teenagers decides to have a horror movie night, and even ups the ante by inviting the prime suspect, murdered girl's boyfriend. A cliche'd up copycat of Scream, but I couldn't help but laugh my ass off at the dialog. It's worth a watch for that alone, if nothing else....

Remember, Remember...

Remember, Remember the Fifth of November

Gunpowder, Treason, and Plot

I See No Reason Why Gunpowder, Treason

Should Ever Be Forgot

Happy Guy Fawkes Day, Motherfawkers!

Random Screen Grabs

Two books I want to spotlight this week, which was a fairly expensive one for me despite it being a five week month. DC hit me with a handful of annuals, and I had a couple of other expensive books ship as well. Tis the nature of the hobby though, and it's my own fault as I'm the one who orders the stuff.

I buy the CBLDF Annuals every year not only because I enjoy them, but because the money goes to a good cause. The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund helps comic shop owners with legal fees and such. Turns out owning a comic book store doesn't exactly afford one the luxury of high dollar attorneys. Anyway, it comes from Image and is usually a handful of short stories from lots of indie and a couple of mainstream creators, which is basically what Image Comics is known for anyway. The book is usually a little bit preachy, and the stories mostly focus on freedom of speech and censorship. This year's isn't quite as bad though, which I enjoyed.

Two stories in particular stood out for me, not surprisingly from the two creators I love the most that were in the book. One of my favorite artists in comics, Ben Templesmith, teamed with writer Andy Diggle for a story called "Barren Ground", in which a small group of teenagers get their hands on an ancient relic said to be an unescapable prison for demons. Of course one of them drops it, and a huge demon emerges, after having been imprisoned for 700 years. The demon looks at the three of them, planning to take one of them as a vessel to spread his message of blasphemy and corruption to the world. Only problem is, this is 2012, and these are teenagers. One of them is an atheist, and the other two are a gay couple. The demon is confused and becomes terrified of a world where such things are not only said aloud, but are accepted and go unpunished. He cowers, and crawls back into the prison, asking the kids to wake him in another 700 years. Absolutely hilarious, and brilliant little story. I highly enjoyed it.

The second was a brand new short from The Walking Dead from Kirkman and Adlard. This one was a bit of a throwback to those of us who are long time readers of the comic, but fans of the show will actually see it as a little side story to the finale of last week's episode. We get a little look at the Governor, and a bit of an explanation as to why he's as evil as he is. We also get the origin story behind his fish tanks full of severed heads. As much as I love TWD, I would've bough this annual just for this two page little story by itself. It was a great little look at the character, even though he's no longer around in the comic.

Every year, Vertigo does a little something for Halloween. Makes sense, being that it's DC's mature readers horror themed imprint. This year, they shipped Ghosts, a anthology book from some of their lesser known creators, and a couple of big guns as well. I bought the book for one story alone, even if the rest had been awful (some were, some weren't) I was buying it for one story.

Superhero writer extraordinaire Geoff Johns teamed with one of my absolute favorite creators working in comics, Jeff Lemire, to do a story called "Ghost for Hire", which closed out the book. This one is the story of a con man named  Eddie Chance who has a knack for getting people to vacate premises for whatever reason a client might need them too. For instance, at the beginning, there's a young couple who refuse to sell their home to a guy looking to build a mall on their land. Turns out Eddie's brother Louis is a ghost, and Eddie has him haunt the particular location in question, until the inhabitants leave, and then he collects his fee. As with most con men though, Eddie's just looking to make a buck, he isn't really down with hurting people. When he's approached by a brother and sister looking to cash in on their mother's inheritance by having her scared to death, Eddie and Louis have make the decision if the money's worth it, or if they should teach the kids a little lesson themselves.

Nothing scary or anything, but Johns isn't a horror writer, he's just a damn good writer. It's a lighthearted story, as were most of the ones in Ghosts surprisingly. Jeff Lemire handles the art this time (he usually both writes and draws his stuff), and while his art might not be for everybody, I certainly dig his style. Would love to see these guys work together more often.

Happy Halloween!

Extreme Pedaling

It's a rare thing for me to get into a racing game. In fact, for the most part I hate them. Especially the ones that use "realistic" physics and handling. Games like Forza or Gran Turismo absolutely bore the shit out of me. When I played the XBLA title Trials HD though, I almost immediately fell in love. It's not exactly a racing game I suppose, you basically ride a dirt bike from one end of a track to the other, driving over various obstacles and terrain. And yes, it's totally a physics based game. You have to maintain your rider's posture while at the same time taking into consideration the amount of throttle to give the particular bike you're on, and control your momentum as you move from one obstacle to the next.

This year, a sequel was released, Trials Evolution. It's even better than HD was, and when it first came out, I was hopelessly addicted. Eventually, I moved on, but have gone back to it once or twice since. Last week though, the first big pack of downloadable extra content finally arrived, and I've once again been playing incessantly. New tracks, new achievements, new mini-games, new tournaments, new gear to equip on your rider, and last but not least a new bike. Not motorcycle, BIKE. Like a BMX bike. That might not excite you, friend, but I was absolutely giddy. Why, you ask? Easy, you can tweak most of the colors on the rides in the game. What the addition of a BMX bike meant to me was I could create a replica of Cru Jones' bike from one of my most favorite movies of all time, the BMX cult classic "Rad"!!! Below is a pic of the bike, as close to Cru's as I could get it.

How freakin sweet is that?! I love it. At this point, I'm using it almost exclusively. One of the new achievements from the dlc actually requires you to pass one of the "Extreme" difficulty tracks while riding it. Well, being the achievement whore that I am, you just know I took my Cru Jones bike and gave it a shot. For those of you who have never played Trials, let me assure you that these extreme tracks earn the shit out of that name. The track in question is called "Back to the Attic", and you can see someone who is clearly WAY better at this game than I am giving it a run through in the video below...

Now, as you can see, this player faulted 22 times and finished in 2 minutes and 16 seconds. That may sound like a lot, but for every track the game allows you to fault up to 499 times and has a time limit of 30 minutes. People, my first attempt ended when I hit my 499th fault about halfway through. My second attempt ended when I ran out of time about 3/4 of the way through, at 370 or so faults. My Tourette Syndrome was in FULL effect throughout my 3rd attempt, I called the rider on this game so many names that I actually ran out and started creating all new ones. The thing was though, I pushed through and at the next to last obstacle, the large swing that you have to jump from onto the piano, I was sitting at 86 faults and was somewhere around 11 minutes. I got this, right? Well, take a look at the fault count and time remaining in this photo:

You want to talk about heart attack-inducing suspense? Yeah. My hands were pouring sweat and shaking, I was standing in front of the television, rocking back and forth like Rain Man, my heart was pounding in my throat, and when I finally crossed that finish line and saw the achievement pop, the adrenaline rush hit me like a nuclear bomb, causing me to break into a victory lap around my house that was the stuff of legend. I ran for what felt like forever. 

Was it worth it for a measly 10 point achievement? Damn right. Will I EVER play this track again? Hell no. But I got the damn achievement, and I'm proud of that fucker, even if it did take me 455 faults and over 29 minutes to get it.