So rude.
Category: Comics
kuribo’s ice skate
After a little bit of debate and more than a handful of failed attempts, I finally sold my Wii U a couple months ago. It wasn’t really doing anything other than sitting collecting dust, just as I promised it wouldn’t when I first bought it off a friend at launch. I couldn’t warrant something relatively expensive sitting around with no purpose aside from hope that flickered in the distance.
Now I really want Super Mario 3D World. As excited as I was for The Wonderful 101 and Platinum Games’ other sure-to-be-rad actioner, Bayonetta 2, I haven’t coveted a Mario experience like this for ages. The videos only had me mildly excited, but then I saw these screens Nintendo recently released.
I recommend clicking on those bad boys for an embiggened treat. It seriously looks incredible, and so fun. It’s Kuribo’s Shoe from Super Mario Bros. 3… with ice skates!
Here, have more, I ain’t stingy:
It comes out in November, and while I don’t plan on getting another Wii U any time soon, this is definitely the best argument so far.
dear mr. watterson
I was obsessed with Calvin & Hobbes growing up. Bill Watterson’s work inspired me loads in my early days of drawing, as evidenced by a post I made here a long time ago. The shameless rip-off Zac & Mac definitely wasn’t the first comic I ever drew—it was preceded by short, generic superhero comics and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles rip-offs, for sure—but circa 4th and 5th grade it was probably the one I spent the most time on.
Needless to say, I’m looking forward to Dear Mr. Watterson:
Never forget how deep my well of originality runs. Some day I’ll punish you all by scanning and uploading both full volumes.
Thanks to James Harvey’s tweet for the heads up!
thrill la thrill
Despite the fact that a great majority of my day-to-day work involves anime, it’s pretty rare that I find a series that sticks with me enough to make me want to write about it or engage with it in any way outside of work. I really dig the stuff that actually makes an attempt to move beyond your typical restrictions, harkening back to the classic, anything-goes animation of the past. Ren & Stimpy‘s John K. knows all about this, questioning animation that doesn’t push boundaries, and he’s not wrong. We all should. After all, what’s the point of rigidly sticking to reality when you can literally do anything you want?
That’s one of the reasons I love the work of Hiroyuki Imaishi (Dead Leaves, Gurren Lagann), and most recently his new studio, Trigger. Imaishi’s latest effort, Kill la Kill, teams him up once again with Gurren Lagann writer Kazuki Nakashima and, well, I wrote my impressions of the first episode here, so read it if you want. Or just go watch the show on Crunchyroll or Hulu.
It’s good. Good enough to get me to do some fan art this morning.
in the mouth of strider’s soundtrack
As some of you probably know, a new Strider game is on the way. While I have a handful of reservations about it—it’s coming from developer Double Helix (Silent Hill: Homecoming), which doesn’t exactly have the best track record—I think I’d be happy with a mediocre game so long as it retained the series’ insane music.
I played Strider on Sega Genesis so much as a kid that its tunes just became another matter-of-fact aspect of life that slowly crept into the background. Is music supposed to sound like this? Well, it does now, kid.
Beyond the relatively straightforward and safe opening track were bonkers jams like this:
And who could forget this absolutely mental ditty from the Amazon stage?
The music in the NES game is definitely more in line with Capcom’s offerings of the time, but I’ll never forget the cacophony of madness blasting from that rowdy Genesis sound chip. Here’s the full arcade version for good measure. Let’s all agree that, whatever Double Helix ends up delivering, it won’t be acceptable unless the soundtrack makes us question reality itself.
For the curious, the latest trailer for the 2014 Strider:
subhumanzoids 