Hey guys, quick note before I pop off to work.

I’ve mentioned that I do games journalism. The most regular work of mine appears monthly in Hardcore Gamer Magazine. It’s available at your local video game store, bookstore, and possibly even newstand. If not, ask for it by name. We offer subscriptions for 25 bucks a year, but you can also download each issue for free in PDF format from Luv2game’s download section. Give it a looksee, it’s a great mag. I’m pretty proud of it, at the very least. The new issue should go live on the site probably later this week. It’s already out on newstands. It’s got Disgaea 2 on the cover and the top-shelf previews and reviews you expect from us.

The name of the mag may or may not be ironic.

I’m going to be redoing my sidebar sometime soon (tonight, depending on how paying work goes) and I’ll be adding a gang of blogs and links to the site. I’d host the mag here, but that’d blow my bandwidth.

Speaking of bandwidth… since November 05, we’ve seen almost 11,500 people come through these doors. We’re averaging between 115-135 people a day now, which certainly sounds respectable to me. It’s enough to give me a happy feeling, anyway. Traffic has spiked over the last couple months, too.

So, guys, seriously. Thanks for coming to the site and keep coming back. I’ll try to keep feeding you content.We’ve got an RSS feed linked off the sidebar and a separate feed for comments as well. There’s also Livejournal syndication. There’s nowhere to go but up, hey? We can make 4l one of the big blogs if we keep at it.

Also, I’m always open to debate, comments, or even chatting. My AIM is ethiopiates, my e-mail is this website’s url (less the www and net) @gmail.com and it’s linked top right… if you don’t want to comment on the site, drop me a line. I’m very approachable and nice to a fault. Did I say something stupid/smart/awesome? Tell me!

That’s my bit of self-promotion for the day. Read 4l, read my mag, and keep on coming back. My promised posts are still in the works, though I may hit you with shorter ones (yeah, ’cause I totally write short posts…) in between.

Peace!

So, funny thing. I’ve known Gavok and Thomas for probably a little over 6 years now, internet-style. I’ve met Thomas once at this year’s E3, what with us being Big Time Video Game Journalists and all. I’ve yet to meet Gavok, but I’m sure that’s going to eventually come down. Power Man and Iron Fist have to hang out sometime, right?

Anyway, six years. It all started here at Indie Madnesse. Indie Madnesse was what you call one of those “improvisational fanfiction” sites. You write one round of a story, then someone else writes another, and so on. I started writing for Reforming Evil Can Be Tricky, created by Kim Kaphwan megafan James “Multimediocre Knight” Howard, and was terrible. Ask Thomas. He delights in pointing that out, but I figure that’s one of those “He’s prettier and smarter and slightly less morally corrupt than I am, so I must break him down.” However, stupidity knows no bounds, so I kept writing. I eventually got better, then “good,” and now I’m working on “great.” I learned to deal with deadlines, with total curveballs, and with completely retarded plotlines intended to trip you up. Come to think, if I ever make it as a comics writer, this was great practice.

Anyway.

One of the big things back in those halcyon days of yore, and yes I went there buddy, was Space Ghost. This was back before Adult Swim was a separate channel for Nielsen purposes. This was back when Adult Swim had swimming related lead-ins and lead-outs and Space Ghost: Coast 2 Coast was the funniest thing out. I don’t know what it was, but 99% of that series was concentrated hilarium. There’s an archive of its transcripts at Snard.com, if you want a refresher.

A few of these episodes went above and beyond the call of duty with the funny. Flipmode, featuring Busta Rhymes, was one. Knifin’ Around, with Thom Yorke (of Radiohead) and Bjork (of… Bjork?), was another. Batmantis? Believe it.

Bear with me, I have a point.

At Something Awful dot com, there’re these forums. These forums have a subform known as Batman’s Shameful Secret. I’m not sure if they’re currently public, but if you want to scope it out, head to http://forums.somethingawful.com and check it out. There’s a thread on this subforum about Ruining the Moment. Take a deadly serious scene from a comic… and ruin it. Often, this results in pure comedy.

So. All of this was just to basically say “This post is so in-jokey that it has its own gravitational field.” It’s got history, baby.

First came this. I’m coming down off a bad couple of weeks, and I needed a distraction. I also couldn’t get the intro to Busta Rhymes’s song “Gimme Some More” out of my mind. So I did this.

Some discussion followed on Let’s Ruin the Moment Some More. It was well received, and then I realized, holy crap! Space Ghost has his own series that was made all adult and mature and whatnot. I enjoyed it, but it was hard to reconcile the comic series and Coast 2 Coast. So… let’s ruin it.

Gavok had me covered with a quickness with two quick shots. Relevant script if you need a primer.

Oh, this is good, right? Then he hits again with these two (reference one and reference two:

What’s that? One more? Have some Knifin’ Around.

Now, he’s put out a strong showing, so how can I resist? I gotta get back in the game. Scripts: Curling Flower Space and Knifin’ Around you’ve already seen.

Sometimes, the old jokes are the best. If you’ve got any memory of the show at all, hopefully this tickled your something-or-other. If not… get with it, man. Go watch some episodes. It’s out on DVD, even.

Glyphs: The Language of the Black Comics Community

I’ve got this site hooked up on my RSS feed, and it’s a great resource if you’re looking for info on black-related comics.

Sorry I’ve been away so much. Being a “video games journalist” takes a lot of time out of my day. Posts soon, I promise! I’ll have plenty of stuff to talk about, for sure!

Ha Ha I Am Blogging About Bad Comic Books

Let’s talk for a moment, you and me, about things I hate.

I hate Venom, for example. I’ve never been able to stand that schmuck, ever since the Spider-Man books turned into the Venom Show back in the ’90s. I hate Howard Mackie for being the embryonic stage of Chuck Austen… and I hate Chuck Austen, because all right-thinking people do. I hate Scott Lobdell, Frank Quitely’s pudgy Play-Doh people, and any book that Ashley Wood drew…

…but most of all, I hate licensed comics that’re written by somebody who hasn’t even touched the source material. I really hate it when I’m familiar–or in this case, scarily familiar–with that source material.

That means I hate the Resident Evil comic books.

Call the neighbors and lock up the kids, folks. It’s time for a bunch of pointless fanboy bitching.

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