Category: Comics

Oil Bambara, pictured above, is a particularly crafty member of the Neo-Human elite. Dressed as a genie, this oozing cyclopean beast tricks an otherwise sweet young girl into committing arson across town thanks to his hypnotic pot of oil. With the pot clutched tightly in hand, she spills its contents in buildings and razes them with glassy-eyed nonchalance. If I were to wager a guess, I’d say Oil Bambara weighs 127kg and is made of pure burning evil.

Quote: “You cannot escape from my world of fire!”
Inazuman to Oil Bambara: “Oil is your weapon, and your weakness! Your body is made of oil! I will use my powers to blow it up!”

As some of you know, I am a daily watcher of Canaan’s devil dog, Rocky. Though th’ devil in him may run to his roots, he has proven a mighty artistic muse since I first moved here. Now that I finally have Photoshop once more and am rediscovering the joy of scanning and coloring things, I can upload the pile of Rocky drawings that has accumulated for the past 11 months or so.

Here is the first, a subtle yet bold announcement:

Oh yes, this would appear to be Streets of Fire fan art, technically speaking. I truly am a man of no shame. Depicted here is breakout singing group The Sorels as they perform “I Can Dream About You” in one of my favorite scenes.

You can download a larger version here, if that is your cup of tea.

I’m a little late on getting around to these, but I finally picked up the first Viz release of Kazuo Umezu’s Cat Eyed Boy, which is an awesome read just as pretty much everything else I’ve read by Kazmandu is. What really impresses me, though, is the design of the cover and insides of the manga. I wish I could scan the whole 360 degrees of it, but rest assured that once I have the second volume, they’ll each make a formidable pair of bricks on my shelf.

I also really like this image below, which I recklessly stole from Same Hat, and wouldn’t have minded seeing on one of the covers. That logo looks especially rad, but man, you gotta see the spine on these Viz editions. Totally worth the use of my Borders gift card.

Anyway, you should pick these up at Amazon, because the price is right, they’re thick as hell, and if you’re interested at all in this type of comic they’re worth supporting.

It had to happen sooner or later, but the news of EGM‘s demise was still pretty crushing, to be honest. I’ve been reading that magazine since Sonic the Hedgehog was a fresh face on the cover; not quite the beginning, but close enough. Even when it went through a stint of having alternating Street Fighter/Mortal Kombat covers exclusively, it was still the best thing on the rack. It certainly served to show me, for the first time perhaps, that a game magazine could be more interesting than the (admittedly awesome at the time) console-exclusive gee-whizzery of Nintendo Power or the braindead zombie cartoon ramblings of Gamepro.

You can download a PDF of issue #1 here

There have been better magazines over the years—I was big on Gamefan‘s enthusiasm, for instance—but I don’t think any gaming publication has enjoyed the consistency of EGM. I was always fond of their personalities and individual but cohesive styles of writing, and thought the majority of their major features were pretty impressive undertakings. On the videogame side of things, EGM probably had a bigger hand in getting me interested in writing for a publication than anything else. While some of the competition was perfectly happy to remain in permanent stasis, EGM grew up with its readership and the words reflected that, even if I didn’t agree with them all the time.

On the Internet side of things, I tended to consider 1up a pretty reliable source when it came to opinions on new games. But most of all, their podcasts got me interested in creating something similar with my friends, which has been a lot of fun. But beyond all of that, I think the saddest thing is that EGM isn’t going to get to leave the industry with a final hurrah. Rather, they’re forced to let out one last bubbling fart with a cover story sporting a hideous closeup image from the latest licensed Wolverine game. You can practically hear the party poppers exploding from here, can’t you?

Jeff Green’s blog post on the 1up firings sums it up kind of depressingly and certainly doesn’t make me want to visit UGO’s version of whatever the site will become. Instead, I’ll just pour some booze out for another great mag gone to the graveyard.