Just one last bit about Gamercamp this weekend. They designed a truly amazing map to go into the attendee bags/speaker packages, to help folks get around town to all of the events. It is utterly brilliant, and I want to steal the idea for myself, somehow. Check out the full map at http://www.gamercamp.ca/directions.

Tickets still available! See you this weekend!

- Chris

I’m happy to say I’ll be participating in Gamercamp this weekend, November 13-14. Gamercamp is “a celebration of the art, creativity and fun of video games,” hosted annually in Toronto. I have some friends in the gaming/indy gaming community, and if you’ll notice this year at TCAF we included a small–but to my mind important–indy gaming component. I think there’s some real interesting crossover between indy gaming and indy comics, particularly the development of narrative and working outside of the studio/corporate model, and that’s actually the subject of the panel I’m on! Here are the details:

Gamercamp: Developing Narrative in Comics & Gaming
Sunday, November 14th, 12:30pm-1:30pm
Comic books and video games—these two relatively young media have grown out of their infancy and are taking on complex issues, emotions, and ideas. Join us as we discuss the intersection of these media and what they can learn from each other. We’ll also be showcasing a range of interesting mutations that cross the barrier between media.
With Miguel Sternberd, Benjamin Rivers, and Christopher Butcher

Exciting! I’m definitely going to try to spend as much time as I can there this weekend as well, as the other panels, talks, and exhibitions seem quite cool indeed. Plus there’s two nights of cool events including a concert by Anamanaguchi, and a double-feature screening of The Wizard and The Last Starfighter! Neeeeeat.

Head over to http://gamercamp.ca for all the deets, and hopefully I’ll see you there this weekend.

- Chris
Image is a screenshot of the game “The Depth To Which We Sink” by Bigpants

CHICAGO COMIC-CON 2009!
600+ Guests including Twilight Saga Actors, former UFC heavyweight champion, Andrei “THE PITBULL” Arlovski, scores of Star Wars guests, wrestling legends and some of the HOTTEST actresses including Michelle Rodriguez, Emma Caulfield, Orli Shoshan and Rhona Mitra.  Get a premier weekend pass or VIP Package and get into the show 1 hour early each day.  Advance tickets start at $25, more at the door.  Get your tickets now at [redacted].
A Paid Advertisement from Wizard Entertainment

Did… did you notice the lack of comics? At the Comic-Con? I mean it’s Wizard, I think enough has been said about Wizard’s relationship to comics to put them into the ground by now (and yet…), but still. They went through all that trouble to rename the convention and everything add “Comic-Con” back in, and their promotion seems to be downplaying, or ignoring completely, comic books. In favour of “hottest”ness. It’s a little strange?

Or maybe not, if you look at San Diego.

One of my biggest criticisms of The New York Comic-Con is that, in its early years, it showed enormous potential to be the sort of comics & publishing-oriented show that this industry needs and deserves. It’s not like it hasn’t been more-or-less sold out every year, particularly the early years that were all about New York Publishing (including and especially comics!). Yet every year the show becomes more and more about movies, toys, and tie-ins. They’re pushing the show closer and closer to the San Diego model and it makes for a weaker show each year. What is the San Diego model btw? Simple: A gateway to nerds. Comic Con International: San Diego is selling floor-space (and advertising space and mind-space) sure, but what they’re really selling is access to mouthy nerds with blogs, tastemakers, half-comprised of the people that make up their audiences and the people that will incite the rest of the country to be their audiences. Comic-Con is all about access, and who’s willing to pay the most for it.

Let’s get this out of the way: I love comics. I think comics are awesome. And I think comics as an industry and a medium needs big events like NYCC and SDCC and hundreds of other regional comics shows: they act as ambassadors for the medium. And so the question for the organizers of these events should be “does any of what we’re doing serve comics as a medium? or an industry? or is it just about the value of the access to mouthy nerds with blogs?”

Now I’m not an idiot, I know the preceeding sentence is naive as fuck. Seriously, Microsoft shows up with a suitcase of cash and they should ask them “but how does what you’re doing serve comics?” Of course not. But there’s that idealism of mine: why not? Something like SDCC but just for the entertainment industry? It doesn’t exist. The movie studios, the video game producers, the TV Shows and toys and Bud Bundy and all that, they’re coming to the comic book show. SDCC has got all the power, because nothing else like that event exists anywhere (Gareb Shamus tried and clearly failed; Reed is travelling the same road Shamus took). Imagine if SDCC really did take the ideological position of “how does what you do help comics?” with their exhibitors, and charged them accordingly? What if they used ideology as the wedge to expand the show into the parks, into the stadium, into the giant parking lot that’s as big as half the convention centre? Here I Drew A Map. Imagine the best possible things happened! Wouldn’t that be great? Why not work towards the best?

Pipe dream, sure. But I like having comics at a comic-con, and if it’s a zero-sum game with attendence: 150,000 people each year, and more and more of the people attending have little-to-no interest in anything other than their specific blinkered fandom (which tends to exclude comics), that means less money for the folks doing and selling and bringing comics to the show. Which tends to mean less comics at the show.

As an aside, the 10,000 TWILIGHT fans at the con really were a problem for the show, but a lot of the reasons that got floated came from a sexist, xenophobic, bullshit fanboy place. I actually feel bad even writing this, but truly, legitimately, 6,000 people at the show JUST for Twilight means 6,000 people that weren’t spending money at the show means 6,000 people that might’ve wanted to go that had an interest in dropping a few bucks at the various vendors? Shut out. Twilight is just the biggest, most concentrated fandom in years–maybe ever, so it puts the problem of Hollywood “stuff” into the clearest relief against the traditional convention crowd. I don’t begrudge anyone taking a road-trip and having a great time for the weekend; I hope the fans had fun. But with a very tight, closed economy at the show (due to space limitations) and little-to-no crossover with the rest of the event, what did having those fans and that event bring to the show? To comics? Why was Comic-Con the best place for that event to happen? And if it wasn’t the best place, and space is at a premium at Comic-Con, then why was it held there?

Two last things:

1. Anime Cons. The big buzz in anime conventions right now is that prices have gone up, and the recessionary economy means that attendees have less pocket-money. Anime Expo, typically one of biggest shows of the year, was reportedly a very poor sales show for most-if-not-all exhibitors. No one had any money. They did have costumes, they did come to hang out with their friends, and they did spend a not-inconsiderable ammount of money on a 3-day pass. They just didn’t have any left-over, afterwards. This wasn’t isolated either, not trying to pick an AX, this is the buzz from most anime shows I’ve been hearing. When a show becomes primarily a place to participate in fandom, a closed circuit, it tends to decline… rapidly. Sci-Fi cons are the biggest examples of this. If your convention is a place to break-out your Klingon costume, hang out in a hotel for three days and go to room-parties, then your convention is not long for this world. Or rather, it’ll be around forever, it’ll just shrink and be sad. No one wants that. Imagine 20 years from now, 40 year old dudes breaking out their Naruto costumes and drinking schnapps out of a bottle in their Holiday Inn 2 dbl bds room with 10 other similarly dressed people. That’s the difference between a vibrant, thriving medium, industry, and fandom, and one that has started to eat itself.

2. PAX: The Penny-Arcade Expo. From nothing to the second-biggest nerd-culture convention (for the public) in just under 5 years. Anyone who follows convention planning/news/whatever is in awe of what they’ve accomplished, and they’ve done it in a smart, controlled way–with an iron fist. First rule of exhibting at PAX? PAX IS A VIDEOGAME SHOW. If what you “do” isn’t directly about video games? You can’t exhibit. Period. 5 years, second-biggest nerd-culture event in North America, accomplished by sticking to their guns. Cooooooool.

Alright. That’s 1200 words of nonsense. Time to go.

- Christopher

Coming this Christmas? Hopefully? I will get it just to put Ryan North in his place. His place is under my bootheel.

- Chris

In addition to featuring a bitch’n soundtrack, this new video trailer for Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix also features a very prominently placed logo for UDON, the publisher and creative studio headquartered right here in Toronto. UDON slapped a fresh coat of digital paint on the game, completely re-drawing all of the character animations, backgrounds, character art and ending sequences to bring the 20 year old classic screaming into the High-Def age. The game looks fantastic.

Pleasing die-hard Street Fighter fans is about as difficult as pleasing Trekkies, but this game is expected to make fans of the series happy. It’s a downloadable game for the Xbox360 and PS3 that features online competitive play, tournaments, and I’m pretty jealous that I don’t get to play, seeing as I’ve only got a Wii… Still, for those of you with the proper systems, you can thrill to getting your ass handed you by some random 12 year old kid anywhere in the world, rather than the random 12 year old kid standing next to you at the arcade machine.

This is a pretty major feather in Udon’s cap, as the game is expected to be one of the most popular titles of the holiday season, and it looks like the studio is going to be front and center in the promotions. I’m friends with the guys at Udon, so I know how hard they worked to pull this together, and I’m glad to see them getting their due… Likewise, I’m glad to be sitting on a few dozen copies of the currently-between-printings Street Fighter Graphic Novels, which should move quite nicely any day now thanks to the continuing build-up in interest in the series

Oh, and while I’m shilling, the second issue of the new SF2 comic drops in stores this Wednesday.

- Chris

“The bluest skies I’ve ever seen weren’t in Seattle. The greenest hills I’ve ever seen weren’t in Seattle. When I arrived in that coastal town, there was only shades of gray.” - Bruce McCollough

So I’m in Seattle at the Penny Arcade Expo. No fanfare, no sound and fury, I just showed up like a Ninja. So far, not including my boothmates from Oni and UDON, I have seen exactly 5 comic book people at this event: John Green, COrey Lewis, Ryan Yount, Marion Vitus, and Ed Brubaker. This is not a comic book show or really of any interest to comics people… although the guy walking around dressed as The Tick might lead you to believe otherwise.

Why am I here? Is this really a vacation? WTF? I wrote this on the plane on the way in Thursday morning, trying to sum up my own feelings on the event:

I am currently on my way to PAX and I have no idea why I’m going. Well, I know why. My friend Jim asked me if I could help him out at the UDON booth, and I said yes. Thinking about it now, part of me wanted to do this for the work aspects… to see how the Penny Arcade guys run their event. I run an event too–the Toronto Comic Arts Festival–and while TCAF & PAX started at around the same time, last year PAX’s attendence was roughly 37,000 people, and TCAF managed about 6500 over the course of a half-dozen festival events… I want to see how the show has managed to grow, and why, but also how they manage that many attendees all at once! Maybe it’s just hubris, but I can totally see a time when TCAF could be this big, or bigger, and attending PAX in the first few years to see how the show works makes a lot of sense to me. To see ways we can improve, add features and value for attendees. Ideas to steal.

The other reason I wanted to go, and this is the crazy one, is that I just love conventions. Love’em. I love theshow floor, the panels, the events… I love sleeping on hotel beds, using hotel pools, getting to see at least a small part of a new city. I like meeting people, and getting a chance to interact with the people I’ve already met. I almost always have a great time at cons–San Diego this year was fantastic–and I’m kind of expecting that this will be no different. Actually, scratch that, it will be different because I’ve got no horse in this race. PAX is a video game con, with video game industry people and video game fans and video game obligations and… I’m a comics guy. Even me, your humble blogger, I try to be… well I have to be… “on” at comics shows. Or book events for that matter. But this? This is a vacation to a place where you speak the language but the culture is totally different. Where you can observe (and even interact!) without affecting the proceedings. I will be in the mist, chilling with the gorillas and we’ve all got Nintendo DS’s. I can sell comics in my sleep, I’ve been to over 50 conventions in my lifetime, the “work” part of this will be easy. That just leaves fun and frolic and a drink or two. Maybe.

I can’t think of a better reason to go away for the weekend.

- Chris

Now it’s Sunday afternoon, and I’m out in the lobby using their free wireless and taking pictures of people walking by. It’s been a pretty fun weekend, we sold the UDON booth out of almost every book they had (the manga didn’t move quite as well as everything else, but it still did solid). I’ve actually gotten 3 really good nights’ sleep, and I feel like I learned an awful lot from these guys. I even got to have a quick conversation with some people from Reed Exhibitions, the folks that will be helping the PAX show expand to the east coast (and the folks who put on the New York Comic Con). That’ll be interesting.

I’ll probably have a more thorough wrap-up of the event later, but for now, I’m having a great time, and I’m going to go finish up the day.

L8rs…

- Chris

In the weeks leading up to the San Diego Comic Con, my friend Jon Ellis, former Editor at PopImage.com, was inundated with party invites and press material from companies exhibiting at the show. As I had not registered for San Diego as press, and run a ‘blog’ instead of a ‘website’, and am not as polite to the general public as Jon is, I was not. I mean sure, props to my friends at IDW and Oni; your free booze tasted great too. But Jon was getting better stuff than me and he hadn’t written about comics in months.

Luckily, he forwarded everything my way.

That’s how I got on the press list for the new MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game–like World of Warcraft or, dating myself, Everquest) from DC Comics: DC Universe Online (DCUO). For the die-hard comics fan who knows little-to-nothing of the online video games, this is the project that pulled Jim Lee away from the artistic tour-de-force that is All Star Batman and Robin The Boy Wonder. Lee designed and redesigned more or less every hero in the DC Universe, as well as dozens of buildings and locations including Metropolis and Gotham, the Bat-Cave and Wayne Manor. The idea of the game is that you can create your own fully customizable and completely original superhero, and then fight alongside the characters you know and love, like The Superman and The Green Lantern. All well and good, but I doubt I would have made much time for it if Sony Online Entertainment–the folks behind the game–weren’t throwing a huge party on the Wednesday night of Comicon.

I like to think of myself as an ethical journalist or blogger or journoblogger or whatever, I don’t feel like I owe anyone coverage. But If I do say that I’ll stop by and do a hands-on with your game oh and thank you for inviting me to your party, and then I go to the party, I should at least check out the game, you know? That way the next time Bender-Helper reps some insane party they won’t look at their list and go “Isn’t that the guy that had 15 raspberry vodka martinis as poured through a giant ice sculpture of our client’s company logo, hit on all of our product demo guys, and then bailed on his appointment with us Thursday afternoon? Fuck that guy, he’s not getting into the My Little Pony Extreme Online party!”

I think that’s called “playing the game” in modern parlance.

So we headed out to the party on Wednesday night, held at a San Diego nightspot spelled “Belo” and we were calling “Bellow!” (as in “Get Me A Martini,” he bellowed!) and then the cab driver laughed at us when we told him where we wanted to be because it’s pronounced “below” as in “underground”. So yeah, party at a nightclub with a name so trendy we couldn’t pronounce, on a borrowed invitation. Good Start! Did I mention we weren’t on the list either?

Luckily, I am Charming, and talked my way in. Also, let’s face it: I’m chubby with a beard, I looked like I ought to be at a video game launch party, and by God, the nice woman and huge dude working the door knew it as well.

Aside: On the whole, I think I will take the general aesthetic appearance of video game journalists over and above the general aesthetic appearance over comic book journalists. No offence to friends in the industry, but apparently 90% of video game journalists roughly fit the “bear/cub” descriptor, at least at this party, and if you’ve got to be surrounded by people also looking for free booze and hors d’oeuvres, then at least they can have the decency of fitting my aesthetic and gender preferences to a tee. And they did.

When we got to the door (the second, interior door) we did not have nametags prepared, but I did have a close personal rapport with Spencer at the door (“Hey, I emailed you the week before Comicon. Twice. You must totally remember me!”) and so that went well. He directed us to the free-swag table, which consisted of a notepad with Pen, a ballcap, and a poster. I don’t do posters or ballcaps, but the notepad seemed eminently practical and so I grabbed one. Little did I know that the Pen was also a miniature flashlight that shot out the Goddamned Bat-Signal, because if I did, everyone I know would be getting a Pen-with-miniature-flashlight-that-shoots-out-the-Goddamned-Bat-Signal this week. Maybe that’s for the best; walking away from a party with two armloads of swag is a little gauche.

And then, the party! I have to say that it was perhaps not as well attended as the PR folks would have hoped. Admittedly, we did arrive a little early, but perhaps even on a lowly Wednesday night there’s just too much going on in San Diego, including a competing Marvel/Activision party, to pack the joint. Can I just say for a second: THANK YOU. This DCUO party ended up being my favourite of the week. Sure, the booze was flowing and the passed hors d’oeuvres were top notch, the DJ seemed to be playing nothing but tracks cut from the “Chris’ Favourites” playlist on my iTunes, and I got Pen with bat-signal in it, but it was the only party I attended this week where I could hear myself think, or hear what my party companions were saying. I know the irony of me complaining about parties being too crowded when I’m talking about a party I basically hijacked an invite to is thick, but I’ll take “moderately attended” over “there is a wave of people at the bar 4 people deep and also I cannot move” any day of the week. That and, by around 11, it felt like a full party everywhere but the dance floor anyway.

I should probably talk about the game?

The party didn’t have the game up and running. I mean, it’s a game at a party, and despite what the Nintendo Wii would have us believe, having games running during your party can kill the mood. There were several video screens running the promo material, talking about the interactive experience of running through your favourite comic book settings as a superhero, the amount of work that has gone into the game, and, most-touted, the amount of work that Jim Lee has put into the game. DC has been notoriously reluctant to promote creators above and beyond the properties themselves, because most creators are free agents and the comics industry in particular works very hard to ensure that no creator maintains any loyalty to any publisher. I was genuinely surprised to see how hard SOE/DC were leaning on Lee’s involvement with this game–perhaps there’s a different metric at work when the creative force is also a top Vice President at the company.

…thinking about it now, I feel that the biggest reason to put Jim Lee’s involvement at the front-and-centre of the online promotion is that SOE and DC are entering a very, very crowded market for MMORPGs. While the behemoth that is World of Warcraft continues to roll on, there are hundreds of fully-realized video game worlds now available to video game fans, including several with a superhero theme. City of Heroes from NC Soft has a several-year head start on DCUO, and while it doesn’t offer real “licensed” DC characters, neither does DCUO exactly. As I mentioned many paragraphs ago, players in DCU Online don’t play as The Superman or The Green Lantern (or as villains like Lex Luthor or Solomon Grundy), they play alongside them, or against them. While you get to be a hero of your own design, you never get to be the hero you may have idolized, and I would have figured that would be the real draw to a game like DC Universe Online. If the game isn’t going to offer you the chance to be The Superman that you may have always wanted, then is it significantly different from other offerings? Is the presence of the incredibly well-loved superhero creator Jim Lee going to be enough to entice hardcore comics collectors to the MMORPG realm? How do real gamers feel about that, are they just companions to the real heroes?

I didn’t know the answers to these questions, and so I decided to do journalism, if by journalism you mean asking opinions of random people at a party. Which I do. The consensus that I received was that even gamers wouldn’t trust fellow gamers with the keys to The Batman. Can you imagine The Superman crashing out of the sky, beating up dudes and knocking down buildings, screaming “n000000bs!”? It turns out Sony could, and did, and hence the appearances of The Aquaman and The Wonder Woman are all computer controlled. Sure, fair point, but maybe I really want to be The Superman and replace all of my “o”s with zeros? Why can’t there be a game for me? Most of the assembled gaming journalists seemed to accept the game on its premise (play in the DC Universe), rather than the platonic ideal of the game (I will play Guy Gardner and constantly hit on other male characters, as is my right), which was refreshing and made me reconsider my position on the game a little. Then I realized that I was at a party and talking about video games instead of drinking and schmoozing, and so I headed to the other section of the bar with the dance floor.

Aside: I hinted pretty strongly to someone at Tor.com that I should blog for them, because hey, why not? That’s what industry parties are for.

Another Aside: I listened to a dude talk about a new collectible card game (like Magic: The Gathering) that exists entirely digitally, inside an upcoming new STAR WARS themed MMORPG, for like 10 minutes, just because he was cute. This was awful too, like you’re spending real money to buy digital cards that you can only play with in this game, and he was just really cute and earnest. Heartbreaking.

Seeing as only one extremely extroverted young man was braving the dance floor (and I require something of a dance-quorum before shaking my groove thang), we went in search of oversized comfortable furniture in which to sit and drink and chat. We met these two great British games journos who were actually at the end of their U.S. sojourn, it having begun a few weeks prior at E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo. They weren’t “comics people” per se, but were enjoying little bits here and there and having a fun time in America. As we sat chatting about comics and games and Japan, Heidi MacDonald swung by with Mr. Beat in tow. Mr. Beat is English, as were our game journos, and so they started talking in some sort of impenitrible slang that is normally turned off when interacting with foreigners. Heidi and I observed that we were in a party at the San Diego Comic Con where we were the only comics people in attendance. Which is a little weird, you know. Well, us and Jim Lee, who showed up at some point and I didn’t notice it.

You know Jim Lee? No? Well all you need to know is that Jim Lee is having an excellent time. Seriously. Jim Lee is the new Stan Lee. Jim Lee was rocking the dance floor, just him and like 7 ladies, dancing away and snapping photos and having a great time, all to the strains of Journey… you know that song that’s everywhere since The Sopranos ended? I heard it at every single club party I went to all week. Anyway, Jim Lee was having an amazing time, and so I went over and said “Thank you for having a good time at this party, you’re just awesome,” because I’d had quite a few but also it was genuinely heart-warming to see someone enjoying themselves at a press party.

Then the lights came up and we all turned into pumpkins.

–

I just-barely made my appointment at the SOE booth the next day thanks to wall-to-wall-crowds, for my hands-on time with the game. Thanks to the first day of the show being a madhouse the official press schedule was thrown out the window. That said, I got onto a machine with my marketing/sales tour guide within 5 minutes, and might I just add that he was cute too? SOE: Thanks for employing my type of guy, it makes the marketing speak go down waaaaaaaay easier.

So my initial, hands-on-impression of DC Universe Online? It’s a video game. Seriously. I mean, it has that sort-of-clunky handling I mentally associate with Tomb Raider rather than the slick movement feel of first person shooters like Halo, and I feel like that might be a hallmark of the genre.

I was running around kicking and punching guys, throwing cars at them, blowing up scenery, the whole 9 yards. As I got more comfortable the PR guy starting showing me how to do more and better super moves, each looking impressive. To keep an element of strategy to the proceedings you can’t just keep hitting the “Kick everyone’s ass supermove” button, with each special attack requiring a period to recharge, marked by a little on-screen timer. So I’m getting into it and running around beating up civilians who’ve been infected with an Alien virus (Brainiac-related, I think) when Lex Luthor drops from the sky, being chased by The Green Lantern. Myself and the other heroes on the connected consoles descend on Lex with a barrage of fully-charged supermoves and kind-of ugly costumes… It’s a bit disconcerting to see Lex LuthorTM In Power Suit being engaged by a gaggle of superheroes that look like something out of a mid-90s superhero publishing effort, sort of like Fan Fiction. I can’t tell if that’s good or bad, but if I had to hazard a guess I’d say the fan base would be “into it”. Lex gets defeated, zoomed away, and then he and The Green Lantern both “respawn” to take up the reigns of their eternal battle once more… It all feels a bit pointless, like it’s all going on whether or not I’m there, and for a game where gamers are going to be expected to pony up a monthly subscription fee, that’s a strange to me. Admittedly, this is just the demo, to give us a feel for the game, but those were my feelings so there you are.

Meanwhile, messages are flashing across the bottom of my screen. SUPERGIRL HAS BEEN DEFEATED! THE ALIEN VIRUS HAS BEEN STOPPED! BIZARRO IS ON A RAMPAGE! or something along those lines. The PR guy tells me that if I activate my super speed, I can head over to where the other characters are and get in on the fight. I have super speed? I click it on and move my character. Zoooooom! I’ve got that electric/blur trail, like in The Flash comics, and that is pretty cool. “You know,” says the PR guy. “You can run up the side of that building there.” And I’m off. And I am running up the side of a building at super speed, and across the side of another building, and on the underside of a bridge, and it is super, super awesome. Seriously, this is the point at which DCUO goes from being just a video game to a whole experience, when I get to viscerally feel the thrill of running up and over a building and leaping from the ledge onto the next one. I also know as I’m doing it that this likely isn’t an experience unique to DCUO, but it is an exciting one and well-executed too. If you haven’t tried breaking the laws of physics, I do recommend it, it’s a lot of fun.

In all my running and jumping and moving to higher vantages, I spot one of the game’s big events: Bizarro is squaring off against The Superman below me. With a mighty punch Bizarro fells The Superman and without hesitating I launch into action. With no other superheroes around–TM DC Comics or otherwise–it’s up to me to stop this huge and shambling monster. Groups of virus-infected civilians begin to swarm me as I unleash a well-orchestrated series of supermoves on Bizarro, trying to keep the monster off guard so that his eye beams will stop knocking away huge chunks of my life-meter. I’ve got the explody superpower, and the spikey super power, but it’s the one where I generate a big club out of rocks and then take a swing that I finally knock him out of the park. Yes, 90s-looking superhero with a strange mix of powers and me, we succeeded where even The Superman had failed! Bizarro: Defeated! I was proud of my accomplishment, and cute PR guy was genuinely surprised (“Wow, I thought you were toast when you went up against him.”) which only added to my sense of pride. Bizarro disappeared, and “respawned” down the way (as did The Superman, which is too bad because I was sort of hoping that all of the in-game characters would wear those black armbands with the bloody Superman logo for a while), reminding me that these characters really are fighting a never-ending battle, but one I walked away from feeling victorious.

I’m going to be honest here, I’ll probably never play this game again. When it comes to consoles I’m a Wii guy, and I’m never going to have a computer new enough or powerful enough to play a cutting edge MMORPG. Hell, I got this gig because I was looking for somewhere to drink on Wednesday night that wasn’t the Hyatt. I can see how my opinion is both invalid and not to be trusted on this one, but: The best part of my Thursday at the show was defeating Bizarro in an online game. It was just incredibly fun, and I recommend the experience. While I can’t tell you how this stacks up against MMORPGs or whether Jim Lee has enough fanboy cred to attract a whole new audience to the genre, I can tell you that in this game, you are no mere companion to heroes. That counts for a lot.

- Christopher

They seem to mean these little bon mots with affection, but it does tell you quite clearly what the editorial staff thinks of its readership. Of course, the new magazine from ADV (nascent anime and manga publisher) is meant to replace Newtype USA, their former chronicle of otaku culture with a name and content licensed from the original Japanese Newtype magazine, and so some recognition that it is the hardcore fan who may be used to such derisive terms may simply be a way to ingratiate itself to the new readership. But it’s going to take a lot more than saying that we’re all nerds together and adopting the tagline “Entertainment for the rest of us” to convince me that they have anything to say, let alone that we’re all alike…

I previously covered PiQ magazine when I got my hands on the press-kit for the magazine prior to its release. The press kit broke down the aims of the magazine and their demographics quite clearly: they want men age 18-34. I’d say the magazine delivers on that promise, though they don’t quite realize that not every man in that demographic is interchangable…
I’m going to be upfront and say that I disliked the first issue. I’m not going to string you along listing good and bad before revealing my ultimate conclusion; PiQ Magazine #1 wasn’t very good. That out of the way, PiQ does have strengths to recommend it, and a lot of potential, but going by the first issue they’re going to have to work awfully hard to achieve any measure of success. It’s incredibly problematic and likely quite rushed, and with a lot of former Newtype readers already very, very angry at them, they’re going to need to improve, and quickly, to get a chance at long-term survival.

I’ve written an incredibly thorough page-by-page analysis of the magazine. It’s taken days to actually put it all together. I’ve included it behind the cut because people browsing here probably have no interest in a 6500 word essay on a magazine that they will never read, but when I say POST MORTEM I actually mean it. I am digging through the entrails of this thing CSI-style to find out what they’re doing and why. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, and you probably shouldn’t bother reading unless you’re really, really interested in the subject.

With that, click to continue:

COVER: The lead feature is the recently-released Appleseed Ex Machina, a 3d animated film based on the works of Masamune Shirow (Ghost in the Shell) and directed by John Woo. It’s an appropriately exciting cover, and relevant to the target audience.

The next thing I notice on the cover is the “Inside Peeks” under the magazine title, which is a contextless laundry list of properties covered: “Avatar, Code Geass, Speed Racer, Terminator!” Similar schizophrenia dots the rest of the cover, THE LIST: “10 best anime, comics, games, movies of the month.”

The rest of the cover text makes no impression on me.

Font: PiQ is using the most popular magazine font of the day, ITC Officina. I’m not sick of it yet, it’s a nice font and I actually set my first book in it (PopImage Volume One) years and years ago… I know that fledgling comics magazine Comic Foundry digs on the Officina as well and I find it popping up with greater regularity… It’s not like the relatively-awful “Technical” font that was driven into the ground in the late 90s (or Comic Sans), but I’d personally want to launch a magazine with something a bit more distinctive. (If you check out the ITC website, Officina is listed as their most popular font.) (They also seem to be using ITC Conduit as their display lettering, which is another of ITC’s most popular fonts).

Price: The $6.99 price point seems about right for a 128 page magazine, though for the general-interest audience they’re shooting for it seems a bit expensive and a bit thin when compared to some of their contemporaries. The saddle-stitched (flat) binding also makes the book feel significantly slimmer than its predecessor which was stapled, and a little bit more bulbous, if that makes sense…

Advertising: PiQ #1 is a 128 page magazine, that includes 22 and 1/3 pages of advertising. By my count, at least 6 of those pages are house-ads or co-op ads for parent company ADV, meaning around 14 and 1/3 pages of ads were sold. I don’t think that’s too shabby, though it’s important to note that a) every singly advertisement sold is for anime product, so far as I can tell, and that’s a direction that the editorial staff are admant about moving away from, and b) Protoculture Addicts #93 did 16 pages of outside advertising in it’s last issue and it’s got a much, much smaller circulation than PiQ, and a smaller page count, and c) the February 2008 issue of Newtype included 23 1/3 pages of advertising that weren’t related to ADV in any way, which is a pretty big drop (and loss in the number of different advertisers).

Of course, PiQ #1 features a 16 page preview of the new Crayon Shinchan manga from DC Comics’s CMX imprint, where issues of Newtype usually featured manga published by ADV. That sort of outside advertorial content is generally paid for, though I’m not peeking into their accounting or anything so who can say? They might have actually increased advertising revenue…

What is clear is that not all of their advertisers have gone along with the change in size, focus, and format, and so far as I can tell the magazine features no new advertisers either… Here’s hoping their advertisers enjoyed the first issue more than I did for the sake of the health of the magazine.

PAGE BY PAGE BREAKDOWN OF PIQ:

It’s at this point I start doing a page-by-page rundown of my thoughts on the magazine. Join me as we journey through the beast…

Page 2: The letter from the editor is kind of awful. I hate it when marketers (and let’s not kid ourselves, the people producing this magazine are marketers, selling popular culture and hoping to sell adspace to go along with it) try and tell me who I am: YOU HATE YOUR PARENTS! YOUTUBE! RETRO GAMING! TEAM FORTRESS 2! PLANETES! (really, Planetes?) According to the editor, “You’re not ‘normal’. That’s why PiQ is entertaiment for the rest of us. Video games, movies, TV, anime, comics…” Are you… f’ing kidding me? Video Games, Movies, TV? This is the way in which we are abnormal? And then the “Editor Guarantee”, where he promises to never use “made up” words or to use language in an interesting way… Just what I was looking for, a boring, consumer-focussed way to express my individuality.

Uggggggggggggggggh. This is the first piece of writing, from the editor, on the second page, and it’s awful. This will not end well.

Page 4 & 6: The contents pages/masthead are actually quite attractively designed, with big, clearly reproduced and well-chosen art. The masthead still has Gary Steinman listed as publisher, although he’s left the company already. Also interesting, PiQ is not published by ADV, but by “PiQ LLC” which has… the exact same address as ADV. Quite the arm’s length they’ve got there, it may actually be an arm’s length.

Page 9: The first section of the magazine is “Peek”, which is not defined in any way or introduced with much fanfare, just a little tag in the upper outside-corner.

The first article? It’s on the new video game Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles for the Nintendo DS. The body text and header/pullquote text all looks quite nice lying on the page, though the font size feels a little bit small for some reason. Perhaps I am getting older. You know what’s weird though? The lack of any sort of easy-to-read information about the game…. like a little stats box that lays out the availability, format, system, price, etc. Also, one assumes that “peek” has a sort of forward-looking mandate, getting a “peek” at something forthcoming or newsworthy. But the article says that the game drops this month… Strange lead.

This page also introduces the “also” sidebars, where short stories are detailed. The text is smaller still, though it’s an attractive-enough graphic.

Page 10: Articles on this page include advance buzz for the Vertical’s Dororo by Osamu Tezuka coming in April, and a sequel to the popular anime “Kite” coming… in March. Maybe I don’t get the point of the “peek” section, it would’ve been nice if they’d explained it to me a little? Anyhow. I think that it’s important to note that there’s nothing immediately explaining what anything on the last couple of pages is. Nothing that says VIDEO GAME or MANGA or ANIME. I can’t tell if this is an attempt to give the reader a lot of credit for being willing to read each article (or knowing all of this ahead of time), or is just really badly executed.

Also, the sidebar on this page talks about the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray wars as an ongoing concern, which is kind of amusing.

Also, the article on the “Kite” sequel makes a point of not having a point of view on the controversy surrounding the original. I guess it’s much harder to alienate people if you don’t have an opinion, but why am I reading you if you don’t have an opinion? What do you have to offer that a listing in a catalogue does not?

Page 12: The sidebar features a paragraph describing this month’s hot new video game releases. This is very weird, as this is information that would be better served by a chart, or a feature article, or some art maybe? It’s awkward to read too.

The main article on this page is decent, a list of upcoming titles from game publisher “Atlus” and their concerted effort to bring quirky, unique Japanese games to North America. It’s all “What” though, no “Why”.

Page 14: Look, it’s an article on Sweeny Todd? Coming on DVD April 1st. Again, the technical info is all in the article rather than pushed into it’s own section or graphic, which would’ve have been much clearer. Actually, I just figured out why this is bothering me: it reads like a press release from the company. “Sweeny Todd is coming your way on Blu-Ray and HD-DVD April 1st, just the way director Tim Burton wanted it!” or whatever. It’s awkward, an advertorial voice that is unpleasant to read.

Also this page, Comic Peeks, an additional sidebar design which features the new Serenity series, the new Morrison Batman arc, and the Hellboy Companion book, in a bit of writing too small for their main article design and too big for the sidebar… Awkward.

Page 15: A mess. An article on the new Sam & Max graphic novel uses the cover from the first edition, there’s a 1/3 vertical page advertisement unbalancing the design, an “also” sidebar disappearing into the binding, and a headline set into trapped whitespace with a hyphen in “High-way”. Ugly and poorly designed.

Page 17: It’s the “DVD Hoedown”, a named subsection within the Peek section, which reviews DVDs. Except it isn’t really “reviewing” them so much as mentioning that they have come out. Again the technical info is in the body text making for a weird advertorial voice, the product images are tiny, there’s a design here using coloured (CMYBrown, which is lazy AND strange) bars and white space and text set on top of the coloured bars that is alternately aligned to or a pica off of the edges of the bars… It’s all just very poor. It looks like it was done at the last second, and the design elements in this section don’t actually repeat anywhere else in the magazine adding to the slap-dash effect.

Oh, and there’s a review of “Tim and Eric Awesome Show: Great Job!: Season One, which I thought they specifically said they weren’t doing?

Here’s another odd thing, the DVD review section goes “Hollywood Blockbuster Film, Anime Box Set, TV Box Set, Hollywood Blockbuster Film, Adult Swim Box Set”. It feels like no consideration has been put into how the information is laid out or to be received by the viewer…

Pages 18-25: Here we go, the main event! The cover feature on the new 3d animated APPLESEED feature. It starts off promisingly with a well-written introduction to the Appleseed universe and the history of the animated films, a nice few paragraphs that bring us up to speed and get us hooked on the story. “An introduction,” one might say.

Page 20 begins the main article, I assumed at the time. But the type has JOHN WOO in great big letters and this page features an interview with John Woo, which is interesting enough… it’s a little blandly told, focusing more on Woo’s business acumen than his creativity… I wonder who the audience is for this piece? At any rate, the single column of text runs 6 paragraphs of Woo interview and advertorial background information, and it runs just right-of center the left-page of the double page spread, the rest being taken up by a pull-quote and some screen-shots of the film. And a big photo of Woo. One assumes, as the photo is neither credited nor captioned.

So when the next spread features a similar layout, with a single column of text that begins with an unindented paragraph and a big bit of text that says MASAMUNE SHIROW at the top, I assume that it’ll be an interview with Masamune Shirow. It is not. It is more article, I guess? I guess the John Woo interview was not an interview on its own but the next part of the article, even though it read (and was designed!!!) as a self-contained interview. So this one is Jonathan Chou (who isn’t re-introduced in the text, which is also a bit confusing, I had to go back and check the previous spread to see who he was) talking about Masamune Shirow. Which is both misleading and less interesting to me.

The last page again starts with an unindented paragraph and a big name, JONATHAN CHOU. The co-producer of the film (and one of the fellows involved in the “Animatrix”) actually gives an interview here and this part of the article is centered on him (and ends with him). So what was going on with the Shirow spread? Did he drop out of the interview after the pages had been designed or something? It’s really awkward to read thanks to the design, and the feature itself seems pretty confused with the text broken up artificially into 2-page spreads..

Oh, and you know what else is annoying as heck? None of the articles have an “End Sign”, that little dingbat graphic that most publications put at the end of their text to signify the end of an article. So after each article sort of ends and then restarts on the next page, I’m kind of expecting another double-page spread of APPLESEED, but instead it launched into something else entirely. This is really, really weak on their part.

Page 26: Our next feature article is on “Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII”. There’s a big pretty CG render at the top of the article of a pretty anime boy. Now here’s the thing, without reading (rather than skimming) the body text or being in-the-know, there’s no way to know what CC:FF7 actually is… The Final Fantasy brand extends into almost every facet of pop-culture, and it all looks really samey. I just noticed that the info box (which finally makes an appearance) mentions PSP, but again, there’s no context… It’s just poor information design.

The sidebar for this article mentions that Crisis Core is part of the “FFVII Completion Project” and mentions that with the release of this game there’s now only one game from the project that hasn’t been released in North America. All well and good, except it doesn’t mention the status of the other “Completion Project” items that span films, anime, and other video games… It’s a real missed opportunity to do something genuinely informative and interesting.

Also: I found this piece a little mealy-mouthed, afraid to have an opinion on the work. It almost contradicts itself in it’s “this offers something new that will bust it out of the RPG mold!” opening versus it’s “this is an RPG for RPG fans!” closing, and even then it reads more like a review than a feature article…

Page 30: The Speed Racer… whatever this is. Preview? Review? Feature? It doesn’t really say much. I think it’s supposed to be a comment on the mixed fan reaction to the visual look of the trailer, but at 4 paragraphs it doesn’t develop into much, or quote any of the sources its referencing about that mixed reaction. It’s like a lazy blog post.

Page 32: A feature on Marvel’s forthcoming SECRET INVASION mini-series. This is the best-written and most interesting piece so far, featuring an actual interview with writer Brian Michal Bendis, some interesting art, and two decent sidebars. Unfortunately the sidebar that’s a timeline of the history of the Skrulls of the Marvel Universe is pretty boring, a missed opportunity to add some visual interest. This article is the minimum standard I expect from a “feature” and it makes much of the other material look underwritten by comparison.

Page 36: On that note, this “feature” on the xxxHolic anime series feels like it has no content whatsoever. It’s a plot recap. Actually, there’s a sentence or two recapping the business deals surrounding its move from manga to anime, and from Japan to the U.S. Is there some top-down editorial verdict that none of their writers are actually allowed to talk about the quality of something? I mean, the closest this gets to expressing any sort of opinion at all is “Regardless, the series has become an overwhelming success…” whilst talking about a series that is at least theoretically debuting this month and again, not quoting anyone or (I feel) supporting that assertion. Again, I can’t tell what this is supposed to be. A primer on xxxHolic? A review? Advertorial?

Page 38-43: This feature on the popular animated series “Avatar: The Last Airbender” actually feels like a feature, and the piece even has an authorial voice that isn’t “buy this!” which is a really nice change of pace. Author Paul Starr interviews the creators of the series in an informally written style that directly addresses the reader and their possible bias against the series because of it’s anime look but non-Japanese origins. While the style of the writing isn’t to my personal taste, it’s competently written and informative.

The design on the other hand, is weaksauce. This article suffers from the same problem as the APPLESEED article, only moreso. The initial double-page spread features an introductory piece that explains the series, and then continues into… a double-page spread of profiles of the main characters in the series, sidebar entries blown up to two full pages of content (six medium-length paragraphs spread out over two pages with character art). Not only is it badly designed and presented, it also breaks up the flow of the feature article something fierce. If I were the writer I’d be pretty pissed myself… unless in this instance the first double page spread WAS it’s own article, followed by another “article” profiling the characters, followed by another article interviewing the creators… In which case: yikes… editorial misfire there.

Also, the design of the last spread is really… overthought. I don’t know if their designers can tell the difference between visually interesting and just too much. Trapped white space, too much white space… It’s all a bit… much. The choice of pullquote was kind of odd too.

Page 44: The next double-page spread is titled “the zen of n” about a video game called “n”. It’s pretty well written and I came away feeling like I knew something. It’s also important to note that the name of the thing that they’re talking about is in the title, and that the sub-header clearly explains what the article is about. This works exactly like a headline and sub-headline are supposed to work. This is important, because the xxxHolic article buried the title of the anime in the body text, and:

Page 46: A double page spread entitled “Viva la Revolution!” with no sub-headline, and an article that starts off with an icon that says SPOILER ALERT! So if you were just browsing this issue you would see an article about what looks like an anime (but given the nature of contemporary pop-culture, something that looks like anime could actually be anything, a video game or manga or movie or whatever) called “Viva la Revolution” and you can only read about it if you want the series’ plot twists spoiled for you. Weak.

Except that the feature is actually on an anime series called “Code Geass: Lelouch of the Revolution”, and that is not mentioned until the second paragraph of body text. Even the “Vitals” box doesn’t mention that this is an anime, or that it’s a tv series versus a movie or anime. Or it’s name.

The feature itself is well-written enough (although they have buried the lead in a rookie mistake). The sidebars are informative too, explaining what a “Geass” is. Still no “End Sign” anywhere in site, so when I flipped to the next page I was expecting more Code Geass info, and instead got:

Page 50: A feature article on the new “Terminator” television series. It’s a fun little comparisson between the timelines of the various Terminator films and the new TV series, and how none of it really “works”. Fanboyish, sure, but exactly the sort of article I assumed I would get from this magazine. My only complaint is that the article starts off with a quote that isn’t actually quoting anything, which the authors describe as a “common refrain.” But if it was that common, source the quote, and if not, it’s easy enough to re-write the opening.

Page 54: Double page spread of the new Honey & Clover live action film by Viz. The design is a little overly-ambitious again, and doesn’t quite come off, but it’s alright.

Page 56: This is sort of a strange one. This spread is designed to look like a feature on “The Tin Man” (though again, it doesn’t mention that in the headline or sub-header). Except the “feature” is three paragraphs. And the “sidebar” is an interview with one of the characters that runs 2/3s of a page.

I think it’s fairly safe to say at this point that the design and content are just poorly integrated across the magazine.

The interview itself is kind of sad, the interviewer asks if “The Wizard of Oz is as huge in Canada as it is here?” which is… are you kidding me? There’s also a question where the interviewer can’t seem to tell the difference between an actor and the character the actor plays, and the interview subject is kind of like “Are you kidding me?”. Both the reader and the interview subject being incredulous at the questions of the interviewer is a poor recipe for success.

Page 59: The beginning of the promised cover feature, “LIST:”. It’s important to note that LIST: is the only section in the entire magazine that gets an introduction. I am glad that they bothered to explain that this is their reviews section, though they take great, great pains to let us know that they’re not the final arbiters of taste, and that their opinions are only their opinions, and please keep advertising with us if we don’t like your comic/game/anime/movie/book. You think I’m probably just being mean at this point, but seriously, this is in the body of the text:

“There’s no point in trying to stay abreast with everything coming out. It’s impossible. And more to the point, it’s impossible to pretend that one magazine can be your ultimate, infallible resource for everything cool under the sun. We may be fancy-pants salaried editors, but printing a magazine doesn’t instantly make us the Wizard of Oz, dictating to you what’s cool and what’s ridiculous–the Internet pulled the curtain on that ruse years ago. … Every month we’ll sit around a table… and draw up a list of the ten new things that we like the most.” - PiQ Magazine #1

So there you go, their review section is comprised of 10 things that they really liked, and even then if you don’t like their opinion, they’re very sorry. This is, seriously, followed up by their review guidelines:

“PiQ’s Rating System. If we use words like “neat,” “engaging” and “spanklicious” in our reviews, that means we liked it. If you see terms like “nasty,” “boring” or “They raped my childhood!!!”, that means we didn’t like it. Our reviews are our opinions–we’re here to tell you what we like, not what you are going to like. Keep that in mind as you have fun reading about neat stuff. (If you like numbers, we hear Will Shortz has a delightful selection of sudoku books out now.)”

Dude. Dude. Points for doing away with a numeric rating system, but that’s just sad. Anime fans are ‘passionate’ and all but that doesn’t even sound like you’re standing behind the opinions you’re expressing, even though you’ve already said that you’re only going to be talking about things you like! Weak.

Also, “spanklicious” would seem to be the exact sort of made-up word that the editor promised on page 2 that they would not use… Three cheers for a consistent vision across the magazine…

Oh, and then there’s this, also from the introduction to the LIST section:

“Anime, video game, TV show, book, manga, comic… in a way the format doesn’t matter as much as it used to, because you and I, we’re interested in all of it.” – PiQ Magazine.

I’m sorry, guys, you’re just wrong. I agree that your readership likely has a wide variety of interests that generally fall under the banner of “nerd stuff,” but that’s no excuse for just slapping content onto the page, or making no effort to be clear about what you’re actually reviewing (seriously, the lack of categorization on the pages themselves is almost pathological).

Point blank: The PiQ editorial ideology is out to lunch. Do you want to know why? It’s because Otaku may like lots of different things, but they’re obsessive-compulsive about the organization of those things. I know I am. I know my customers are. I know the internet has wide-ranging fights about the exact definitions of terminology related to their hobby/lifestyle, and how individual items within that hobby should be classified. This is all fact. Actually, I’m going to enter the following into evidence; it’s an interview I just conducted with one of our better customers and a friend of mine. Enjoy.

Interview with an Otaku
Christopher Butcher interviews Derek Halliday, admitted multi-faceted Otaku and squarely in the middle of the 18-34 year old demographic for PiQ. Derek can be found on the internet at http://halliday.livejournal.com/

Comics212: Did you collect NewtypeUSA when it was coming out?

Derek: I didn’t really collect Newtype, but I would pick up issues where they had stuff I wanted to see in it. It was alright. It’s basically exactly like the Japanese Newtype, but more about what’s coming out here.

What did you think of PiQ?

I started flipping through it, and became bored almost immediately.

I didn’t like how it was all over the place without… you know. There’s 4 articles about anime, but it’s spread throughout the book, between the comics and the video game stuff. I just felt that if there’s one thing you wanted to look at you had to jump all over the place.

What kind of stuff do you collect?

Uh… comics, anime, manga, dvds, toys, art books… Considering all of the other shit I collect I just can’t afford to collect video games anymore. But I do like them and follow them… I just can’t keep up with it all.

Do you organize them or do you just sort of keep everything together?

I put all my American comics together, and then they’re sorted by which company they’re from. All of my manga is organised by title or artist, and my anime is all together.

But those things aren’t mixed together?

No.

Even though you collect all of them, and are interested in them.

Yep.

What about your anime and your other DVD stuff, do you keep that together?

My anime is completely separate from my other DVDs. My TV DVDs are separate from my movies… I just like to categorize things.

Me too, buddy.

Thanks for participating Derek!

So what have we learned here? Slapping down the content in your review section (not to mention throughout your magazine) all willy-nilly is not cool just because someone might conceivably buy both “Tweeny Witches” and “Patapon”. We all like all of this stuff, but we don’t just cram it all onto the same shelf in our homes or collections, and it makes for a poor reading exeprience.
How could the editors of a magazine for Otaku not understand the first thing about Otaku? They’re all (hell, we’re all) obsessive compulsives.

Alright.

Moving on.

The review section is fairly well written, though a little bland and as worried, nearly uniformly positive. Any problems with any of the featured items are quickly contextualized, and most of the reviews are mostly plot recap anyway. It’s pretty much the definition of contemporary reviewing, and perhaps it’s just unfair of me to hope for something more. Standout reviews include The Ten-Cent Plague by Ellen Wernecke and Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney by Kevin Gifford, which offer rounder views of their subjects and deeper insight into their histories and their cultural context.

Page 79: This spread introduces a new section, “LINK”, with the letter column. It’s called “The Whine and Cheese Party” and I can’t tell if that’s clever or insulting. They take the curious task of having the guy who answers the letters introduce himself, meaning that it is not the PiQ editorial staff who is responding, but one specific guy at the magazine. Perhaps it’s cynical of me to assume that they will hang him out to dry at one point, but considering how reticent they are to weigh in on anything and that this guy comes off as fairly combatative (he describes anyone who complains in a letter as a “player hater”). I guess that it’s okay to have a vocal opinion about your readership, they aren’t buying ads [cheap shot]. From a design perspective, there’s not enough difference between the text of the letters and the text of the responses, which is an easy-enough fix, if they decide to fix it.

Page 80: A feature on LARPing (Live Action Role Playing) runs for four pages here… I think LINK is all about fandom, rather than about the things that fandom concerns. Yay! I figured out what one of their sections means! Three cheers for me. The feature is good enough I suppose, although I really can’t help but chuckle a little at the huge picture of “menacing” men and women pretending be vampires. I’m sorry, I really am, I shouldn’t laugh.

Page 84: A review of a an anime convention with lots of cosplay photos. Alright.

Page 86: A listing of upcoming conventions organized by date. Seems relatively useful, though I think I prefer listings by geography so I can figure out what’s in my general area, rather than simply what’s next weekend… still, hardcore fans will certainly travel to the big shows so maybe this suits the target demographic?

Page 90: The next section of the magazine is MONITOR, which I take to mean “news” and maybe something with an opinion, which is welcome.

This section starts off with an article entitled “Is Anime Dead?” which explores the trials and tribulations of the anime industry over the past few years. The article is actually a collection of essays by notable anime industry figures, and offers a variety of viewpoints on what the problems are, what’s causing them, and what might fix them. It’s actually really well done, an excellent piece of discussion, and the strongest piece in the whole magazine. It’s even sort of conceptually neat, asking the question as the magazine launches from the ashes of an anime dedicated magazine.

I’m kind of annoyed that no one in editorial or on staff comments or writes for the article though. It seems to me to be the same problem that pervades the rest of the magazine, a lack of opinion or ideology. I’m glad they’re at least presenting a platform for opinion this issue, I hope that continues.

Oh: Best part of this piece was a list of the top 10 best selling anime DVDs in Japan for 2007: Four of the top 10 discs were Western animation, including Ratatouille, Shrek 3, Cars, and “Leroy and Stitch” which I thought was “Lilo and Stitch” but maybe there was a translation error? Anyway. It’s a nice sort of kidney-punch driving home the fact that anime is having a tough go of things everywhere, not just in North America.

Also interesting: The magazine has had a pretty aggressively anti-moe (essentially: exceptional cuteness usually found in big-eyed, young anime girls) stance considering that material was the bread & butter of Newtype USA. I have to wonder if they’re really interested in retaining any of that audience at all…

Page 96: Monitor continues with an article on how the producers of the Naruto: Ninja Destiny” video game turn the fighting moves from the manga and anime into the moves used in the game. I’m not sure why this is in a “news” section? At any rate, even though it’s only 4 paragraphs it still could’ve used more than the 2/3s of a page it received as several of the displayed images measure less than 1″ x 1″ and really aren’t designed to be shown so small.

Also on this page are two Top 10 charts seemingly chosen at Random, the “Top 10 Selling Manga” (but from Japan?) and “The Top 10 Hentai DVD Names” which is funny, but racier than the rest of the content in the magazine. I’d actually prefer more lists like this in a magazine, they’re good way to get actual content and information across.

Page 98-99: This double page spread features 4 short articles of varying quality. The most disappointing is the short article entitled “Asian Invasion” on “The finest in film from Japan, China, Korea, and beyond”. All well and good, but the article again featured no info graphics at all, and therefore had no information at all on any of the dvds it was covering! Release, format, price, extra features, anything… the whole article takes on the tone of a conversation between two friends, and not a piece of formal writing. “Hey, you know what’s good? Zebraman. It’s totally not like Takeshi Miike’s other films. If you ever see it around you should get it.” Thanks man, that’s really informative!

“The Line Between Camp and Crap” is an interview with several of the creators of “Mystery Science Theatre 3000″ promoting their new project “Cinematic Titanic” by talking about crap films. It was pretty fun, but the design is weak again, much like in the letter columns, with no easy visual differentiation between the questions and answers. The whole purpose of design is to make things both attractive and clear, it’s a pretty basic concept, and it’s not really present anywhere in the magazine.

“Signal to Noise” is, apparently, a CD review section. Why this was not included in the review section is beyond me.

“Don’t Smurf Me Bro” is an article on the anniversary of The Smurfs. It’s just weird, there’s no other way to explain it. It’s like 5 random thoughts about Smurfs, including an awkwardly quoted section from The Venture Bros.

Page 100: This double page spread features a really well-written, relatively well-designed profile on a Japanese illustrator named “Symbolon.” I found it genuinely informative, and while the sub-header has an unnecessary hyphenation in his name because of a line-break, generally, it was really good. Except.

Here, I’m going to do something that the article didn’t do: http://www.symbolon.jp/

How do you not bother to link an artist’s personal online portfolio in a spread of their work? Is it laziness, or a really unfortunate editorial mandate not to include external links? Either way: Weaksauce.

Page 102: Model Citizen, an introduction to model building. It’s well done, but it’s an ultra-basic article on model building. Appropriate for a first issue I guess, but I’m not quite sure if there is an audience that wants to build Gundam models that doesn’t already know the very basics of building Gundam models.

Page 104: I feel like I’m only repeating myself here, but this page features a profile on a Gundam-themed cell phone that doesn’t mention price, availability, or a website link to find out more info. Seriously, guys, just go buy any magazine at all (particularly something oriented towards consumer purchasing… fashion mags are good in particular) and just teach yourself how this sort of thing is meant to be done.

Page 105: A feature on kewpie dolls. Cute, nice photos, same problems as previous.

Random Observation: Photos and images in PiQ don’t have captions, credits, or copyright info. Anywhere. Isn’t that a major oversight? I mean, I find it less readable personally, but isn’t there a sort of… requirement for some of this stuff?

Page 106-109: I noticed the credit/caption thing because this article was the first one to actually include captions. They’re at like 4 point, which leads me to believe they aren’t actually part of the design ideology and were sort of jammed in after the fact.

It’s a 4 page article on the history of adventure game publisher Legend Entertainment, an early competitor to Sierra. It’s well written, designed, has great sidebars, and is ultra nerdy. Perfect article, no anime fans will care though, so again, I have no idea what the target audience for this magazine is…

Page 110: So there’s a feature called PIG. This is the last article in the magazine, and a bizarre note to go out on.

At first I was mystified that a company that only exists to sell pop-culture to its readership would move away from their bread-and-butter, anime and manga, and the vertical integration that comes with it. Especially when the first issue of that new magazine runs a cover-featured story entitled “IS ANIME DEAD?“. But I made my peace with it, because they’re clearly trying to include their anime coverage in a larger cultural context, appeal to new audiences, and move to a format that can realistically be supported by far more advertisers. Fine.

But the last page of the magazine is an opinion column, unsigned by an author and therefore coming on behalf of the magazine editorial staff itself, that outright insults their customer base for buying too many DVDs. Seriously. They spend the previous 109 pages actively trying to sell you things (yay advertisers!), and then run an editorial bemoaning conspicuous consumerism (our readership sucks!). Opposite a full page advertisement for an anime box set, an advertisement that is at the least a co-op advertisement by their parent company.
That effectively hangs an “Under New Management” sign on the front doesn’t it? A schizophrenic one that is written in those cut-out-from-newspaper-letters, sort of a ransom note thing…
Of course, it’s a pretty awful and unpollished article… and honestly a completely bizarre note to go out on. Another editorial misfire in a magazine full of them.

Pages 112-128: A 16 page preview of Crayon Shinchan manga from CMX. I like Shin-Chan so this was a fun read, but it’s miles away from any of the manga that they had been running in Newtype and I can’t see the manga/anime market caring. I suppose it’s for the audience of readers that are the “mainstream” and that watch Adult Swim, where the animated version appears. Probably a good move for CMX as an advertiser, but in terms of editorial content I can’t imagine that PiQ will get any mileage out of it… at all.

Conclusion:

Like I said in the opening, PiQ #1 is just a weak all-around magazine. It lacks focus, it’s editorial mandate is poorly considered, the design has the building blocks of quality but doesn’t know what to do with them, and a number of persistent mistakes damage the readability and my personal enjoyment of the magazine. I think it’s one thing to say that your magazine is for men, age 18-34, but it’s another thing to actually produce a magazine for that demographic. No mentions of sex or attractive women or men are featured in the magazine at all, no libido, no opinion (except that they don’t seem to think much of their readership…). PiQ #1 is a surprisingly bloodless affair, and if there’s one thing that their demographic is, it’s PASSIONATE (and obsessive compulsive…). How they missed the mark so far is beyond my reasoning, but miss it they did.

Failing a spectacular improvement between issue #1 and #2, I wonder if this magazine will be long enough to find it’s footing, it’s editorial voice, and perhaps most importantly a readership that doesn’t outright hate them right now thanks to the mishandling of the transition between the former NewtypeUSA magazine and this new endeavour. I hope they do because a venue for smart writing on pop culture is a good thing, and an editorial acumen that chooses strong, smart, and most importantly passionate articles is always welcome. There’s a lot of possibility there, and articles like Is Anime Dead? hint at what could be, but they just aren’t “there” yet and probably won’t be without a concerted effort on the editorial staff’s parts.

Good luck PiQ, you definitely need it.

- Christopher

But the question is, will PiQ?

The PiQ media-kit I received included a letter from Publisher Gary Steinman, outlining the major changes that the magazine will undergo. It’s very important to note that throughout all of the commentary I’ve seen from ADV on this matter, including the media kit, PiQ is being treated as a name change to Newtype USA, and not as an entirely new magazine. While I have no firm answer as to why this is, I’d speculate that declaring it to be the same magazine but with a name change (not to mention a substantial format change…) means you get to maintain your existing distribution and subscription arrangements. But it’s pretty clear that the new boss ain’t the same as the old boss.

For starters, the magazine will shrink in size, both in physical dimensions and in page count. The new physical size is 8″ wide x 10″ tall, as compared to Newtype’s 9″ x 12″. The latest issue of Newtype weighs in at 160 pages, and the info for PiQ seems to be saying it’ll drop at around 130 pages. The price is also much lower, with the new magazine retailing for US$6.99/CDN$7.99, versus $12.98/$16.98 for Newtype. Oh, and the magazine will be perfect-bound rather than stapled, which means it’ll have a spine! No more free DVDs with each issue either, so far as I can tell. The big format change? PiQ will drop Newtype’s right-to-left Japanese reading orientation in favour of a standard left-to-right orientation. Essentially, the otherworldy Japanese “object” that was Newtype USA is gone, to be replaced by something that very-much resembles Wizard in size… and in tone.

According again to the Media Kit, the new editorial breakdown for PiQ will be:

• 20% Anime
• 20% Gaming
• 20% U.S. Comics / Japanese Manga
• 20% Genre Movies / TV / Home Video
• 10% Toys / Collectibles
• 5% Gadgets / Hi-Tech Gear
• 5% Lifestyle (fashion, accessories, events)

Apparently PiQ is “entertainment for the rest of us, squarely addressing the needs of a cutting-edge young male audience,” and they’re estimating a 70/30 split in readership, in favour of male readers. This reads to be to be very, very similar to Wizard magazine, a jack-of-all-trades scenario.

Some final stats from the presentation:

• PiQ is expected to have a 100,000 circulation at launch, with a target circulation of 150,000 by the end of 2008.
• PiQ will launch with 15,000 subscribers, all of which are former Newtype USA subscribers. So, now you know how many people subscribed to Newtype.
• The first issue of PiQ goes on sale March 18th, 2008.

Also included with the material I received, twice, was a mock-up of the first issue over. As noted on the cover itself this is a cover concept only, and is not necessarily going to be the final cover. However, it pretty clearly shows where the magazine is headed, and while it may have the bearing of Wizard, it looks an awful lot like video game magazine PLAY (which I love and is awesome). Lets take a look:

PiQ Issue One Concept Cover – Copyright 2008 AD Vision Inc.

So, what do we see here? Well, the first and most telling thing is the comparison between this cover and the most recent Newtype USA. Where Newtype USA Jan 2008 features the names of tons of new anime series (at least two dozen by my count), an anime creator profile, an anime art book, and the words “Anime, Manga, Games, Music, more!” the focus on the new cover is all over the place. A Tokyo Travelogue! Cosplay! Anime! But also video games and LOST and Battlestar Galactica and Red Hulk and the promise of bulleted lists! (No manga?)

So there you have it, the inside scoop on (what might be) the first issue of PiQ. All you have to go on about this magazine being the same one as Newtype USA is the publisher’s say-so, with the magazine looking significantly different, and more generic, than what has come before. But honestly? This is probably a really smart move on ADV’s part, with magazine publishing being almost entirely advertising-driven, opening up your mag to the extremely lucrative advertising of the extremely lucrative video game field makes a hell of a lot of sense, and ending a licensing agreement for a magazine’s name and content that may or may not be contributing to your bottom line anymore? The same. The only thing up in the air is what the fans, anime fans, Newtype buyers and subscribers, are going to think of something that isn’t quite as OTAKU as they were hoping for. Hey, there’s always Otaku USA for you Otaku out there!

Still, I’m looking forward to the first issue. I think that, much like the comics industry needs something like COMICS FOUNDRY, it also needs something like this to supplant the rampant misogyny in Wizard’s magazine… Good luck guys.

- Christopher

Part One: http://www.penny-arcade.com/2007/11/14 – Second Post
Part Two: http://www.penny-arcade.com/2007/11/26 – Second Post
Part Three: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/11/28
Part Four: http://www.penny-arcade.com/2007/11/28
Part Five: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/11/29
Part Six: http://www.penny-arcade.com/2007/11/30

Also, video game reviewers are in themselves broken, terrible gamers because they play games the wrong way, to complete and rate them, and not to enjoy them.

Now I’m not saying I agree with the Penny Arcade fellas or anything, but I got to play the game that kicked off the whole to-do, Assassin’s Creed. All I did for 30 minutes was run around an giant, immaculately-rendered version of Jerusalem in the middle ages, stabbing people to death. It was beautiful and satisfying and complex, and man, I sure did like killing people.

So, yeah. The Penny Arcade guys are totally right. But the point is, it’s nice to know that reviewing is corrupt in every industry! I just wish there was more money in comics to justify the kow-towing to Marvel and DC.

- Christopher

P.S.: The Penny Arcade guys are raising money again for Children’s Hospitals across North America. Check out ChildsPlayCharity.org.

Edit: I had to removed the inlay trailer because it looked like Firefox was choking on it. Sorry guys, go click the link though, the video is great.

ITEM: Over at The Forbidden Planet Weblog, it has been announced that the British Edition of Bryan Talbot’s 2007 graphic novel Alice In Sunderland has broken the 10,000 copy mark, a pretty stunning achievement for a $30 hard cover that no one wanted to publish in the first place. Much as FP did, I’m going to attribute this to a lot of hard work on Talbot’s part, as well as the book finding a natural home in its native country, being a (thinly disguised) history of Northern England, of specific interest to many of the denizens of… Northern England. Talbot’s 5 stop U.S. tour, his appearance at San Diego, and a non-stop press push in England are remarkable, and he’s set a very high standard of creator involvement for graphic novel promotion. The book is going into a third printing in the U.K., and is on (I believe) it’s second printing from Dark Horse Comics here in North America.

ITEM: I’ve been going on and on about Taiyo Matsumoto’s Tekkon Kinkreet / Black & White for a little while now, so I’ll take a little break to let Jog do the talking for a little while. Over at The Savage Critics, my favourite comics writer spends a little over 4,200 words talking about Tekkon Kinkreet, both the manga and animated adaptation, in an essay that I quite honestly have not sat down to read just yet. I plan to though, when I’m done this. As a reward to myself. If you’ve got some time to spend, why not check out the review?

ITEM: Today marks three years of The Comics Reporter. Congratulations to my pal Tom Spurgeon and all of the wonderful writers he’s working with.

That’s all for now.

- Christopher

Just a quick note that the entries are going to lose their “Day” tags in the titles from this point on, because after this day (and even during) our trip compressed, doubled back on itself, and in big parts stopped having anything at all to do with comics. As this is a comics-related blog I don’t want to dilute the focus too much, but almost all of my photos will be going up on a public sharing service thingy sooner or later so you won’t miss anything, promise.

With that, Akihabara:

Patrick Macias recounts the history of Tokyo’s Akhiabara district in the excellent Cruising The Anime City: A Guide to Neo-Tokyo and since you should all read that, I’ll spare you the bio and just point out that Akhiabara is a neighborhood that is in the process of evolving from a discount electronics mecca to a hardcore manga and anime Otaku paradise. Shown above is Chuo-dori, the main drag in Akihabara facing towards the train station, I believe. We visited Akihabara twice during the trip, on Day 03, and on Day 11. The photos here are from both trips.

Continue reading after the cut:

Pachinko is basically Japanese slot machines. This is a Pachinko parlour with not only an Evangelion-themed wing of these machines, but also a fun cardboard cut-out of the cast where you can decide to be Asuka or Rei. This is not the wierdest thing about Pachinko in this post.

This was just awesome. If there was any way to get $11 colour flourescent lightbulbs back to Toronto without them exploding in my luggage, I probably would’ve dropped a ton of money here.

This is the outside of Comic Tora no Ana, one of three such stores within a few blocks of one another in Akhiabara, and contender for “biggest manga store in Japan”. Much like Animate in Ikebukuro there were at least 8 or 9 floors here, though unlike Animate the focus here was mostly on Doujinishi — fan made comics — and sexy doujinshi for men, at that.

Here’s a shot just inside the door, I think, of the new-releases table. The volume of material that is released is just amazing…

It’s Phoenix Wright Manga! OBJECTION! (Hah, I’m only including this for the google hits). Still, one has to imagine that some smart publisher has picked this one up for North American distribution.

Somehow I don’t see UDON picking up this particular Capcom-related manga for release in North America. Heh. Actually, this store was, moreso than anywhere else I visited in Japan, REALLY UPTIGHT ABOUT TAKING PICTURES and so I didn’t get much in the way of comics-related photography, sorry guys… This spank-worthy Felicia drawing will have to tide you over until later in the ‘tour’.

Back outside and we see one of the myriad statues and pieces of Otaku memorabilia that decorate the various electronics and culture stores, all beckoning you inside.

I like taking pictures of convenience stores.

This store on the other hand, just up the street, was very encouraging of my amateur photography. Thank you, Toys Golden Age Akihabara! You are awesome:

There were toys of all makes, models, and origins on every surface of this store, including the floors, on top of display cases, and even some on the ceiling. Shown above there is a Brandon Routh-styled Superman toy(!) from Microman that was never released domestically! Of course I bought it, because I’m a nerd.

I really bet Viz wishes KNIGHTS OF THE ZODIAC would have taken off.

So in Akiba (as the cool kids call it) they’re really not afraid to let their Otaku-flag fly, as evidenced by this awesomely decorated store on the main drag. They also don’t seem to be too concerned by copyright either, because I can see Namco and Nintendo in the U.S. teaming up to fuck these guys up with lawyers for even HINTING at what they’re showing here. This is another way in which Japan is better than America. THERE, I SAID IT.

Retro gaming is much loved in Japan and Akiba in particular, and there are a lot of stores that feature retro game carts from the exceptionally rare to the 10 for $10 bin. If you’ve got the money, you can also pick up any Japanese-originating video game system you can remember. So, no Atari 2600, but lots of Nintendo.

Here we see the disk-drive add on for the Japanese version of the Nintendo entertainment system, called the “Family Computer” or “Famicom”. I remember as a kid we’d hear stuff like this on the playground and dismiss it as the highest level of ‘liar, liar, pants on fire’. I mean a Disk Drive? For the NES? That’s ridiculous. All of your schoolyard myths are true… in Japan.

Speaking of which, do you enjoy retro gaming, but aren’t interested in dropping $$ on an old-school Nintendo system that might stop working the next day? Well you’re in luck, because for UNDER TWENTY DOLLARS you can pick up the Famulator, a home console system that EMULATES THE FAMICOM. Want to play all your old Famicom and Nes games (that have no copyprotection, FYI) on your big screen without the download charges on the Wii? Here you go. Games sold separately.

Wanna buy a Super Famicom (SuperNES in the States)? They were here for between $15 and $25, depending on the condition. They all worked though.

Sure, you could buy a vintage Sega Genesis (also known as Mega Drive in Japan), but for just 999 yen (that’s about 10 dollars) you could also buy an emulator system called the GAME JOY. All of the Genesis love, plus a 6 pack of games (including Sonic, Golden Axe, and Shinobi). For $6. Japan.

Mario is wearing a sign, telling me not to take pictures. I’m kind of an asshole, I guess, but come on… You’d take this picture too. (Sadly Mario was not for sale)

This awesome throw-pillow? Also not for sale. WTF?! Why would you do that to me?

This is my host, David. He is posing in front of every game you could ever want for the Famicom. He’s really happy to be here, it’s his favourite store in Japan. It’s very close to my favourite as well. And did I mention that the whole time we were in these stores, that the music playing overhead was 8-bit video game theme music? Awesome, awesome, awesome.

As we leave, the sun begins to set on Electric Town. It’s kind of lovely.

…and it actually started to get busier at night.

Here we see a dude escorting his girlfriend to work at a Maid Cafe. Seeing them reminded me that I needed to see a Maid Cafe before I died, and so we decided to go to the only place where I knew there was one for sure: Don Quixote department store.

It’s hard to explain Don Quixote. It’s 8 floors of a department store on Acid, in Japan. Whether you want to dress up like Goku…

…or buy novelty underwear branded by a comedian…

…or buy cheap cutting-edge street fashion…

…or get lost in the toy section…

…or become a goth…

…or go to a maid cafe, Don Quixote in Akiba is the store for you! Heh, seriously though, this particular maid cafe is actually NOT the maid cafe inside Don Quixote. When we got upstairs to the one inside DQ, it was not only completely full with an hour-long wait to get in, it was also being actively patrolled for folks taking pictures. Apparently the girls who dress as Maids at DQ and then perform are actually becoming famous idol-singers, and if you’re going to take photos, you gotta pay!

Meanwhile, this Maid Cafe was just down the street and took up two whole floors in a shabby little commercial building. As you can see, they’re pretty serious about photos as well, so I didn’t get anything from inside (sorry) but I’ll try and explain what a maid cafe is for you.

Basically, you’re either a total desperate nerd (male or female) or on a date and want to go someplace insane for a coffee, so you go to the coffee shop where the girls are dressed like maids. They all talk in anime voice-actress-voices and charge you for the privilege of spending money. All of the food is made of refined white sugar. They hit on you non-stop, if you can communicate in Japanese. If not, it is awkward when they hit on you. When they bring your food, they do a little song and dance routine to make your food “MORE DELICIOUS!!!!”. Then, the floor-show starts.

Everyone has to go to a maid cafe before they die.

Can you make out that sign up there? What does that say…

Oh, that’s right. It’s a maid-style beautician. In case you want to be groomed by a psychotically happy and subservient woman dressed like a French maid. If that’s like… your thing.

As you can tell here, we’ve entered the criss-cross of small streets and ‘back alleys’ that make up the dense, hardcore area of “Electric Town” that’s more-or-less across the street from the train station.

Andrew and The Colonel.

Their afros are silver pachinko balls, FYI. This is the same pachinko parlour that had the Evangelion display out front.

This is how it actually looked.

This is how it felt.

The thing you need to understand is, in Japan, stores have no problem sending people out front to yell at you while you walk by, on a loudspeaker. HEY YOU COME IN WE HAVE THE BEST PRICES!!! Usually they’ll have three or four people out front, yelling over one another, at the bigger electronics stores. Yeah.

Coolest toy display in Japan.

Oh, Yotsuba! revoltech.

Derek, those two were for you.

Ashitaka No Joe lives in a shop window, beckoning you in. I thought this was kinda cool.

On the other hand, I thought this “life size” manequin of Asuka from Evangelion that was for sale was a little creepy, for some reason. Perhaps because it was for sale next to a young-girl-in-school-outfit manequin that was life-sized, anime-styled, and also for sale.

Let’s just chalk it up to ‘cultural differences’.

Speaking of cultural differences, this is LAMMTARRA, the 8 floor (plus at least one basement level) porn store around the corner from the train station. As you might imagine this place was INCREDIBLY BUSY at 10pm on a Friday night. No, really, really busy. It just kept getting dirtier with every floor you ascended. The 8th floor is called “MANIAC WORLD”. I probably should not describe what is for sale in MANIAC WORLD. Let your imagination run wild.

Needless to say, no pictures of the inside. Sorry.

Speaking of the train station, directly across from Akihabara Station on the JP line is a huge ultra-disturbing nerd-mecca department store, that I only found out about after I got back to Toronto. Fuck. Somehow, I managed to take multiple pictures of it without ever figuring that I should have gone in.

It breaks my heart, seriously. Just go to that website (SO NOT SAFE FOR WORK) and you’re like “OMG THIS IS AWESOME” and I could’ve seen it in person and didn’t. Can you hear my sigh from where you’re sitting? You should be able to.

Ah well, it’s not like I didn’t see a million other awesome things, right? Like this. THis young lady is a worker at a Maid Cafe, and she is handing out free packages of tissue paper that advertise her maid cafe (includes map!) in front of the station. This could be your job, dressed as your own personal fetish, handing out leaflets every night.

I think that one is actually a sexy nurse. Anyway, these people have nothing on the folks who show up in front of the train station to sing, perform, or throw an impromptu magic show WITHOUT any commercial aspect. Seriously.

Singing, choreographed movements, the whole kit and kaboodle.

She performed to her own pre-recorded voice describing the tricks on a loudspeaker.

Man, these guys looked awesome, like Japanese hip hop harlequins, but we were there for 10 minutes and they couldn’t seem to get their shit together. I secretly feel like their performance was amazing.

Japan really is the future.

CUTE BABY! This is Noa, the son of our hosts in Japan David and Kiko. You may remember a blog post from a year ago or so where I was holding him and he was tiny. He is big now and likes to talk and run around. He was exceptionally well-behaved in Akiba, though he was a little weirded out by all the freaks. Pft, amateur.

So we’re in the train station, and at this point I’ve resolved to buy a different kind of Japanese beverage every time I’m thirst. I ask David if this one is any good, and he says it’s alright, but it tastes “mediciney”. But it’s a health drink, apparently, and I could probably use a health bonus. So I drink it.

Then Kiko mentions that it has nicotine in it. And I was like “What?!” and David looks at the ingredients, and apparently the second or third ingredient there is nicotine. Japan.

Finally, we’re ready to head home. I just want to thank Kiko, David, and Noa again for being such great hosts while we were in Japan. We had a great time. And at this point there are like 10 and a half days left…

- Christopher

ITEM: My friends at UDON have been pretty busy lately, with everything except new Street Fighter II comic books (by the way, the Image to the right is by Long Vo of Udon, and features two fairly recognizable characters duking it out for Wizard magazine, copyright their respective whatsits).

Now, you may be asking yourself “Why is it that there aren’t any new Street Fighter Comics on the stands?” (Actually, chances are you probably weren’t, as I don’t think my readership crosses over with Udon’s so much, but indulge me for a second). Well, it was announced a week-or-two back that Udon has been tapped to do all of the art for the new 20th Anniversary edition of the Street Fighter II video game. Basically, they’re taking the fan-favourite (and best, honestly) version of SF2, called Super Street Fighter II Turbo and creating a “remix” called “HD Remaster“.

What’s different exactly? Well for starters, it’s going to be downloadable onto your X-Box 360 (only, at this point), and today’s home consoles make the arcade machines of our youth all look like PONG, they’re so much more advanced. The big difference is the level of detail in the art. Whereas the Street Fighter characters of our youth were a hundred pixels high or so, these new ones will be massive, and be better-able to capture expressions, details, every little fold of cloth… well, see for yourself:

So, it’s essentially going to be like the current Udon Comics series, but playable. The primary art and style is actually by Alvin Lee of Udon, who, according to his Facebook profile is hard at work on the series, alongside the rest of the Udon team. It’s pretty rare that a licensor of Japanese material is then asked to go and work on the property for the owners, particularly in Japan. I get the sense that licensed books are sort of “Free Money” and it’s really not best to think about them too hard (which would explain some of the many, many atrocious licensed books). But yeah, doing an adaptation so good that it ends up being the basis for an anniversary edition worldwide? AND it’s a video game license that’s up there with Mario, Pac-Man, and Sonic? Kudos, gents. (Screenshot from Gamekult.com, Click for larger.)

ITEM: ZOMBIES! In honour of The Walking Dead Volume 6 finally shambling it’s way on to store shelves this week (yeah, no kidding there aren’t any fast zombies in TWD), may I present to you two chances for you to take on your own metaphor for consumerism/racism/society as a whole? These flash-based zombie killin’ games will get you all pumped up until you die, and realise that when the Zombiepocalypse comes, it’s gonna be about our brains, one way or another…

1. BOXHEAD: ROOMS and MORE ROOMS: Okay, so you’re in a room, and you have to defeat neverending legions of the undead using a myriad of weapons. You only last until you run out of ammo. The End. Despite this, it’s incredibly addictive and mildly depressing. Did I mention that Satan is in the game too? Lots of Satans? Yeah. There’s also the BOXHEAD: HALOWEEN SPECIAL, in which you as lone-gun-toting-hero must lead groups of ‘civilians’ to safety. But we all know that in the world of the undead, there’s no such thing as safety. http://www.kongregate.com/games/SeanCooper/boxhead-more-rooms
2. THE LAST STAND: Okay, so you’re behind a barrier, and you need to defeat neverending legions of the undead using a myriad of weapons. Sound familiar? Actually, it’s fairly different from BOXHEAD (more detailed/realistic for one), with a focus on dividing up your daylight hours between searching for survivors, weaponry, and rebuilding the only thing between you and the teeming legions of zombie hordes. Lots of fun zombie-movie in-jokes amongst the wide array of shambling (and occasionally running) corpses that you must destroy. I really like the hunting rifle, myself. http://www.freewebarcade.com/game/the-last-stand/

ITEM: Somehow I missed this, but a week ago it looks like GayGamer.net, a homocentric (heh) video game news/commentary site started up their own comics division. Cleverly entitled http://gaygamer.net/comics/, it’s going to cover the queer goings-on in the comics world. Somehow it missed my Cockphobia post. Perhaps it was beneath their notice. At any rate, posting at the blog has been a little spotty since it launched, but they just added a new blogger and it’s always good to have more queer-positive content out there.

That’s it for now. Thanks for reading!

- Christopher

- Hollywood.com has David Duchovney confirming a new X-Files movie is in the works. According to Duchovney, “This week, they’re starting some kind of road towards doing it (the film). Gillian and I both want to be in it now. We’re happy to do it.” How about that eh? Time heals all wounds, as does a pretty thoroughly unspectacular post-X-Files career… On a related note, my employer has a ton of original X-Files art for sale by X-Files comics adaptation artist Sean Scoffield. There’s also art from the Queer as Folk TV Show, the movie eXistenZ, and the recent Underworld mini-series from Marvel Comics. Just Saying.

 

- Video Game website “Gameasutra” has an article up on being out and LGBT in the video gaming industry. The answers are very, very similar to what I hear from gays in the comics industry, so in lieu of any such articles on comics, I figured it was worth pointing out to the industry-watchers who watch this blog. Here’s a good quote from the opening:

Jeb Havens, probably one of the most visible and vocal LGBT developers, says, “It’s not like there’s only a handful” of gay people making games, “but there’s no presence or community. There’s no ‘gay’ face to it.”

I’d love to write a similar article about LGBT creators and industry folk in comics, particularly within the larger realm of blogging, but with no time to spare it’s not gonna happen. C’est la vie, but go read this one: it’s really well done. Thanks to GayGamer.net for the link.

 

- The best part about my job is selling good comics to people. There’s a special kind of magic to selling someone the first volume of The Invisibles, or giving them Scott Pilgrim for the first time. It honestly makes all of the other stuff, like selling Civil War, totally worthwhile. I was reminded of this by Matt Forsythe back in the comments to my Taiyo Matsumoto post, as it looks like just went out and dropped a bunch of coin on Matsumoto books. Nice! This is why I was so pleased to see this nostaligic remembrance of comics retail from Richard Bruton at the blog Fictions, about his time at Nostalgia & Comics in Birmingham:

“The rarest of prizes though, the really fun one was when a customer would come in and tell you that they’d read everything they wanted and could you suggest anything to read. That always made for a fun 10 minutes or so of chat and selling.

“I always sold the books to people with the promise that if they didn’t like them all they had to do was bring it back in and we’d refund the money, no questions asked. To me it seemed the only fair thing to do. After all, this wonderful customer is putting down good money for a book just because I’m telling them it’s wonderful. I’ve spent a little time asking all the pertinent questions to gauge exactly what sort of thing they’re after, but I could always misjudge their comic character and sell them something they hate.

“I’m very proud of the fact that in all my years of doing this, not a single copy has ever been returned. Not one.” – Richard Bruton, Fictions Blog

I don’t have that kind of track record, sadly, but I occasionally let what I think people should be reading get in the way of what they might enjoy reading. I’m doing my best :) Tip of the hat to the Forbidden Planet Blog for the link.

 

I think that’s all for now. The contest details for the Garage Band contest are finished. They’re awesome. Posted later today.

- Christopher

Nintendo Canada is giving away 6 custom-painted Nintendo Wii’s, each by a different Canadian artist. Of note to comics fans? UDON Artist Arnold Tsang did a pretty sweet ‘street art in Super Mario World’ design (seen above), but they’re all pretty darned cool. Better still, our friends down the street at Magic Pony are sponsoring the event, which means, hopefully, that all of the designs will be on display there soon…? Hopefully?

Canadians can head over to http://theartofwii.nintendo.com/ to enter to win one of the custom Wii’s. Everyone else can go look at them, but YOU CAN’T WIN. BAHAHAHA. Finally, it’s Canada’s revenge for being locked out of every other damned contest.

- Christopher

“Lat is Malaysia’s Will Eisner, a ground-breaking graphic novelist whose deeply personal stories about society, family, and religion, speak to us all.”

2. Do you people care about Video Game stuff? I do, but I don’t want to assume too much. Still, the Grand Theft Auto series had a serious impact on my personal life, and it’s done much to popularise crime-based narratives in the past few years in comics, so I figure the news of the new Grand Theft Auto 4 Trailer breaking late last week is of interest. It’s set in “New York” this time out, and the NY media are already over it with angry folks at City Hall pitching 3 kinds of fits. Sounds to me like the game is gonna be a hit!

3. I don’t like Project: Rooftop. There, I said it. I’m sick of seeing talented creators feed their time, creativity, and intellectual property into revitalising trademarked characters, and for free, no less. I understand the memes that this site sprang out of, out of the cultural response to and reclamation of popular culture, and I still think it’s a little misguided and unfortunate (it’s a short step from that to HAL’S EMERALD ATTACK TEAM) but at least memes aren’t institutionalised like this. I wasn’t going to go and strap myself to a target like this, but this morning Warren Ellis started up a similar thread on The Engine, inviting participants there to redesign Witchblade as an artistic exercise, and then pointing out that the Editor of Witchblade is on the forum, and it just gave me a chill. How fortunate that all of you artists get to be cheap research and design for trademark holders. How fun.

If you’re a smart and talented artist, first and foremost do whatever the hell you like. But if you’re here reading this and you give a shit about what I have to say, then please invest your creativity and skill into your own work, which you own.

- Christopher, Killjoy

Note: All of these games probably require either Adobe Flash 8, or Adobe Flash 9. It’s a free download.

1. 5 Minutes To Kill Yourself – http://www.adultswim.com/games/fiveMinutes/index.html
Courtesy of Adult Swim, the fine folks who grace us with The Venture Bros. and Harvey Birdman: Atourney at Law, and fucking curse us with The Aqua Teen Hunger Force, comes a game that’s so good it’s meta. You’re a bored office-drone throwing your life away in one of a million identical cubicles, while the collection of freaks that makes up your co-workers jabber on about inane nonsense. It’s enough to make you wanna take that stapler and jam it right into your eye-socket. Well now you can! You’re in control of a virtual office-drone, and you must get him killed in 5 minutes or less! Say the wrong thing to a co-worker, pee on some faulty electrical equipment, push the guys in I.T. over the edge or just pick up that stapler! The clock is ticking, and it’s either suicide or one more stupid meeting about nothing that will go on forever. It’s like “My Dad: The Virtual Simulator”. Awesome.

2. Desktop Tower Defence – http://www.handdrawngames.com/DesktopTD/

We’ve all been bored at work, and maybe imagined the collection of paperclips, erasers, and other detrious that adorned our desks were little invading armies. You know: The erasers have to defend the rubber bands from the invading staples? Maybe it’s just me. That won’t stop you from enjoying Desktop Tower Defence. Essentially, little enemies are entering the screen from the top and the left, and you need to situate little towers that will fire things at them and stop them from reaching the other side of the screen. Each tower can also be upgraded for better range and to do more damage, and some towers can slow down enemies, or are stronger against enemies in the air or on the ground. In short, it’s like a really nerdy table-top RPG, but completely animated and really strategy oriented. It’s great fun, and an addictive time-waster. After 5 tries I was able to beat it… on easy. I’m kind of afraid of what HARD is gonna be like.

3. Understanding Games – http://kongregate.com/games/pixelate/understanding-games-episode-1 

We’ve had McCloud’s Understand Comics, and John Kovalic took a stab at Understanding Gamers in his Dork Tower series, but we’ve yet to see anyone attempt the same thing for Video Games, or at least, I’ve yet to see it. But why would a text on the nature of video games be a book? Why wouldn’t it be… a video game? It is! The people at ‘Pixelate Environment’ have created Understanding Games, a series of informative flash games that talk about the nature of gaming (if that’s too techy/nerdy for you, just think of them as ‘chapters’). Starting at the very basics of gaming and what games are, and gaining in difficulty of both concept and execution as the series moves forward, these are really informative, thoughtful examinations of what makes a game. There’s even some semiotics in there. It’s got a lot of potential, and I hope new installments make their way to the net soon. Check out Chapter 1, Chapter 2, and Chapter 3 now.

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I hope I’ve sufficiently ruined your productivity for the next day or two. All of these links were grabbed from Kotaku, a video-game blog sponsored by Gawker. Check’em out.

- Chris