Welcome to another Weekly Emanata, a weekly review of comics. I’m going to write as if you, the reader, has some passing knowledge of comics, but feel free to post questions in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer.

Army@Love: The Art of War #1-4
written by Rick Veitch
art by Veitch & Gary Erskine
I have a natural aversion to satire. It’s not that I dislike any satire I read; it’s just that it seems way to easy to become heavy-handed, to go for the obvious jokes instead of actually commenting on something, or to become so concerned with iconoclasm that any semblance of story just seems to slip away. Rick Veitch has done some earlier work that I’ve enjoyed (Swamp Thing) and some work that I’ve pretty much reviled (his time at America’s Best Comics). I’d heard some pretty rave reviews for his short-lived Army@Love, though, so when I got the chance to pick up the first four issues of this “season two” for cheap, I went ahead and gave it a try.

Well, ok, second best. The best video game related trade I ever made was when I traded my cousin Will a bunch of beanie babies for his Dreamcast. I almost feel bad for swindling him so hard. But, this is about my second best trade ever, which was trading in Fable 2 straight up for Grand Theft Auto IV. Because, even though I made a 2-hour round-trip to get Fable 2 at midnight, stayed up ‘til 7 A.M. playing it, and let it consume my life for about two weeks, I have now come to loathe Fable 2. It has nothing to do with the game’s genre or any of the technical aspects of the game (its control scheme, meh graphics, HORRENDOUS load times, etc.); from a technical aspect I pretty much enjoyed the game. No, my main beef with Fable 2 is how it fails so utterly and completely at one of its highly promised intangible features: the ability to emotionally engage a player.

I admit, in the last two years I’ve cracked more than my share of Playstation 3 jokes. For the first year of its life, it seemed to me to be a more expensive system that played mostly games that appeared on the 360; more of a status symbol than an actual game console. Which was probably a result of the fact that it seemed targeted at a very specific entertainment demographic—people with expensive home theaters and HD televisions—a group that I decidedly did not belong to.

So, I played Bioshock on the 360. I played Call of Duty 4 on the 360. I played Grand Theft Auto IV on the 360. I could have played Fallout 3 on the 360. So, why did I choose to get a PS3? Well, there are a couple of reasons. First is that my girlfriend and I are avid gamers, and there is something to be said about having all available major platforms. That said, many of the great games on the PS3 can be found on the 360. There are a few games—like LittleBigPlanet and Resistance: Fall of Man—that I really wanted to play, but with the economy the way it is right now, a handful of great exclusives isn’t really enough to make me want a new system.

So, why the Playstation 3?

Ah, another year has come and gone (in much the same way that I did with your mom last night) and that means it’s time for us all to make a list of things we feel we need to do to better our lives. And we will strive for these things deep into the heart of January, whereupon all that exercise, healthy eating and planning to climb Mount Everest will eventually seem like more trouble than its worth.

This year I’ve decided to set upon myself a list of reasonable resolutions to help cater to my video game addiction:

Welcome to another Weekly Emanata, a weekly review of comics. I’m going to write as if you, the reader, has some passing knowledge of comics, but feel free to post questions in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer.

Batman #683
written by Grant Morrison
pencilled by Lee Garbett
The final part of the epilogue to the climax of Grant Morrison’s first half of his great Batman novel… to be continued in Final Crisis #6. Don’t get me wrong, it’s been fun seeing Batman triumph over everything the world could throw at him, from the products of an twisted Batman-making experiment to, apparently, the Devil himself, but things seem a little out of control.

tl;dr Viral marketing is a tricky business, and these guys aren’t good at it. If it weren’t for IGN and its claims, we’d never guess that this obscure video is supposed to advertise or relate to an upcoming Wii exclusive.

Should I be excited or shouldn’t I? I can’t tell from this film clip, which IGN says is supposed to advertise or at least relate to an upcoming exclusive Nintendo Wii title. Apparently, they got an anonymous e-Mail that made these claims, but if it weren’t for IGN’s hinting, we’d never guess.

If we take IGN’s word and assume that the clip does have some significance, then we can try and analyze it for any clue as to what kind of title’s coming out. There’s a brief but noticeable glimpse of a retro-style gaming screen in the art style of Geometry Wars, perhaps suggesting another casual title along the lines of Boom Blox or Wii Play. IGN did indeed say that one of the frames from the clip contains a glimpse of “the Wii title itself”.

Every year, for the past four years, the great folks at the Comic Book Resources Classic Comics forum have participated in a Classic Comics Christmas list. Thought up and moderated by the Spectacular Kurt Mitchell, past lists have been built around favorite single issues, favorite characters, and favorite comic adaptations and merchandise. This year, the topic was favorite covers from before 1990.

So, presented here with gracious permission from Kurt Mitchell and the rest of the Classic Comics crew, are my picks for this years Twelve Days of Classic Comics Christmas.

Ladies and gentlemen, you get tickets to one of these fights. Which do you choose?
(Take a gander after the cut).

Let’s face it, the science fiction genre has really gone downhill. Excluding movies made from comic books, which have produced some surprising gems over the last years (and should probably have their own category anyway), sci fi films have been entirely devoured by CGI and attractive mid-20’s actors, leaving very little room for plot, characterization, and heart.

A brief review of a couple of the Sci Fi movies released in 2008. (spoilers below the cut)

Y’know, it’s funny; I grew up in a world where gamers the world over scoffed at Mac’s complete inability to play video games. After all, your nerd machismo rating is directly correlated with how well your machine can play the latest games and up until recently, Mac just didn’t have what it took to be a major gaming platform.

Of course, with the rise of the iPod and an increasing population of hipsters and graphic artists buying up Apple’s sleek little machines, game developers are, more and more, seeing Mac as a pretty attractive platform to produce for. Most specifically, I’m talking about the iPhone and the iPod touch.

So, snowed in today with nowhere to go, I finally had to opportunity to crack open my fresh copy of The Dark Knight on DVD. I’ve loved Batman my entire life–photos exist of me at four or five walking around in a black turtle neck, carrying a batman action figure, my makeshift cape billowing out behind me.

Anyway, watching it tonight got me thinking about icons, our touchstone mythologies that carry through to the next generations. There are films like Star Wars or The Godfather that introduce characters that become landmarks on the map of culture. And what’s interesting to me about the current state of Hollywood, and comic movies in particular, is the propensity of companies to constantly reintroduce, reorganize, reconstruct these iconic characters. In my childhood, Michael Keaton was Batman. Then Kevin Conroy’s gritty portrayal in Batman: The Animated Series became my standard. And now it’s Christian Bale. It seems as though each successive generations has had their own incarnation of the character to suit the tastes of that generation.

This should maybe be left for a Valentine’s day article, but whatevs. People write love poems for each other for Christmas, right?

Well, here we stand, poised on the precipice of a new age of Megatonik. Since the last week has been a veritable Falcon Punch in the face with the combination of finals week, preparing to go home for the holidays, and getting all of the new writers any information I thought might be useful.

That having been said, I’d just like to openly thank all of the new writers for their support and I hope we all have a little fun with this thing from here on.

Welcome to the first installment of Weekly Emanata, a weekly review of the comics I buy. With MEGATONik’s push to be a place for all sorts of nerdpop culture, I’ve made it my mission to pretend I’m qualified enough to review my favorite things in the world. In fact, I’m just a guy who works at a comic store and has spent more money than I can believe on all sorts of comics, graphic novels, and sequential art.

So, here we are. I’m going to write as if you, the reader, has some passing knowledge of comics, but feel free to post questions in the comments and I will do my best to answer. This first set of reviews might be a little longer than later columns since I’m also going to be doing a little “bringing up to speed” on the titles I get every month.

Beanworld Holiday Special
Larry Marder finally returns to his comic book baby, Beanworld. It’s a little tough to describe: Beanworld is a little microcosm of humanity and ecology, a world that is carefully balanced in a strange set of rules. Marder intends to have the arc of the book, which was first published in 1985, follows its own life cycle. “First and foremost, I’m investigating what I often call the ‘poetry of a bean plant.’ Beanworld over time is growing and evolving in the same way that a bean plant does. First, it is nourished by its own seed. Then it sends down roots and feeds itself. After that it, reaches aggressively towards the sky. All of this is the foundation upon which Beanworld is built upon.”

In this issue, the artists and scientists of Beanworld work to get the Pod’l'pool Cuties, little baby beans, to interact. The solution is typical Marder, unpredictable in a traditional story sense but fitting perfectly into the logic of his fantastic universe. If you’re interested in ecology, globalism, or comic book formalism, I can’t recommend this book enough.