Graphic Novels

[Reed John]

Graphic Novels

Eh. Video games for movies, no matter how good the movie, suck about 95% of the time, although
the game based on Batman Begins was pretty good.

[Mitch]

Graphic Novels

Oh dear. They're making a Watchmen videogame. And it's a brawler.

What else would it be GY? It's a pretty violent story. Especially if they include the Vietnam stuff.

I mean, I'm sure it'll be terrible, but Watchmen isn't that bad a source material for a console game.

[Ginger Yellow]

Graphic Novels

An adventure game? It is, after all, about a series of mysteries being solved/uncovered.

[Mitch]

Graphic Novels

Well yeah. Back in the day Infocom could have made a brilliant text-adventure out of it. But I can't see how that sort of dialogue-heavy game can ever exist on consoles.

But looking at it from the other direction, using the Watchmen characters in your standard GTA-style game would give it more depth than the competition.

[Ginger Yellow]

Graphic Novels

That's the thing - there are many potential "good" choices of genre. But as a brawler it's only ever going to be another brawler, and there haven't been many good ones in the last decade (let's face it, it's not going to be God of War). And there are plenty of good, dialogue heavy adventure games on console -text adventures don't even begin to describe the range. You've got RPGs, action adventures, even point-and-click adventures. And, as you say, open world games. It's the laziness that pisses me off. Competenet brawlers are easy to code and easy to develop, unlike time consuming adventures and art intensive open worlds.

Anyway, more info. Apparently the episodes are going to be prequels, hence the brawling.

[Mitch]

Graphic Novels

It sounds like The Warriors game based on that description? Posh Double Dragon.

[Guest]

Graphic Novels

Does anyone know the name of the colony in Dead Space
where the crew of the Ishimurafirst find the artifact??

Google isn't helping me.

edit: not to worry. I found it. Aegis VII, if you care.

[Ginger Yellow]

Graphic Novels

Oh dear God.

[Reed John]

Graphic Novels

I really don't think that has anything to do with whether or not the movie will be any good.

[Ginger Yellow]

Graphic Novels

Awful music has no bearing on the quality of a movie?

[Reed John]

Graphic Novels

It doesn't help, but if it's just in the end credits then I don't think it matters much.

Better yet, maybe it's in a scene where the script calls for "shitty band doing a bad Dylan cover in the background."

It's probably some sort of cross-promotion being ram-rodded by the execs who think MCR can sell the soundtrack or whatever.

[Guy Profumo]

Graphic Novels

In case it hasn't been mentioned, and I can't believe it won't be in over five pages, a "must read" graphic novel is the two-parter "My Father Bleeds History"/ "And Here My Troubles Began".

I can't recommend them enough.

[Reed John]

Graphic Novels

Who is the author, GP?

Back to Watchmen for a moment.

These look pretty cool.
http://www.superherohype.com/news/watchmennews.php?id=7562

[Guy Profumo]

Graphic Novels

Art Spiegelman.

It's the "Maus" books.

[Reed John]

Graphic Novels

Ah. I have the first Maus book, but I haven't finished it yet.

[evilC]

Graphic Novels

I thought this might be of interest to some of you here.

-

[Jon]

Graphic Novels

Yes it is evilc, except a Monday night in that London is impossible. However, I've a friend who I'm sending the link to and no doubt he'll go so thanks.

[Ginger Yellow]

Graphic Novels

I've just finished reading Grant Morrison's run on Animal Man. It starts off pretty inauspiciously, very earnest, fairly standard superhero stuff with an environmentalist twist. But it picks up dramatically from the second trade, and the finale is spectacular. Very meta indeed, drawing on the likes of Joyce, O'Brien and Tristram Shandy. More than anything else, it becomes a meditation on the comic form itself (specifically the foibles of superhero comics), much like Sandman becomes a story about storytelling.

[Mumpo]

Graphic Novels

I've been meaning to read Morrison's Animal Man for years and there's just an outside chance, GY, that your post might be the catalyst for me to actually do it.

I'm three quarters of the way through his four-volume Seven Soldiers Of Victory series and though it riffs, as they say, on alot of his favourite themes, it's worth a go.

[chrisS]

Graphic Novels

Couple more recommendations; sorry if these have been mentioned before. Some these are ongoing series, but there's at least a couple of trades of each out there.
Scalped, which about an undercover cop on an indian reservation. That makes it sound really cliched, but it's told from the point of view of the cop, who ran away from the reservation aged 13. Really well written, with none of the normal patronising bollocks you find when native americans are written about.
fables, about a group of fairy tale/ nursery rhyme characters living secretly in New York
Criminal, a real none-more-noir series. It's just won a few Eisner awards, and the actual comics themselves have all kinds of articles about, and recommendations of, assorted films and books in the same genre. Despite being marketed by Marvel, it's creator owned and feels like a real labour of love.
Also, Jinx, Torso and Sam & Twitch are all fantastic crime comics written by Bendis, before he started writing every book at Marvel. Can I also second the votes for 100 Bullets, y - The Last Man, and Ex Machina.

[Gambrinus]

Graphic Novels

Was Fables some sort of Sandman thingy? I think I've read it, but it was a long long time ago.

Does Asterix belong in this thread? I've been reading these for about 15 years now.

[Ginger Yellow]

Graphic Novels

Was Fables some sort of Sandman thingy?

No, although there are some similarities (it's also Vertigo). Basic premise is that fairy tale characters (fables) are brought into existence in another dimension (sort of) by the imagination of humans, where they do (technically did) what humans say they did. But a big baddy called the Adversary launches a massive war, and the Western fables flee through portals to our world , and form a settlement in New Amsterdam, where the bad fables are given an amnesty in return for living by Fabletown rules. The comics start in medias res, so it's modern day, and the fables are plotting to retake the Homelands. It's pretty cool.

[evilC]

Graphic Novels

Question:

I kind of lost touch with comics and graphic novels when my mate stopped working in a comic shop, so...

Were any of the Deadline characters/stories ever gathered together to form graphic novels of their own? I thought Accident Man was an interesting idea, you see. (Sorry for any thicky-ness inherent in this question!)

[Guest]

Graphic Novels

I also lost touch with comics after my mate stopped working in a comic shop (he was sacked for, ahem, giving stuff to his mates for free).

Anyway, Accident Man actually appeared in Toxic weekly (not Deadline), a short-lived rival to 2000AD. It did come out in its own comic for a few issues but, as far as I'm aware, there haven't been any graphic novels.

There were rumours that a film was gonna be made - which may have prompted them to reprint the old strips - but this was about ten years ago so I guess it never made it past the "development" stage.

[evilC]

Graphic Novels

Cheers for that, Johanista. I told you I was rusty about all this shit!