Previous News02.03.2009 - Terrence Marks:I used to read comic books. DC exclusively. When I was young, I read an issue of Secret Wars II, got confused, and decided that Marvel wasn't worth bothering with. I mention this because last week we were at the Mattel Outlet and they had packs of Justice League figurines. That used to be my favorite series back during high school. I remember switching to it when Teen Titans tried to explain Donna Troy's origins.
I considered picking up a few of the toys. They had some decent characters. They didn't have my favorite characters, but they had some okay ones. Here's why they didn't have my favorite characters and why I don't read superhero comics anymore.
I remember the second-to-last issue of Justice League that I read. They had introduced a new supervillain.
It went like this:
The bad guy teleports the heros onto his space station. They're trapped in some kind of power-nullifying chairs.Bad guy: I have a Space Chess set. You heroes are going to be my chess pieces or I'll kill one of you.
Hero: No, bad guy. We refuse to play your game.
Then the bad guy kills Ice, to show everyone that he's serious and for-real. Then the heroes play the game. It was one of the most anticlimactic, pointless deaths this side of Tasha Yar. It'd be as if the microwave really exploded, killing Brisbane and Kimberly, ending You Say it First. I got the next issue in the hopes that it would be a regular comic-book fake death. It wasn't. She is, as I understand it, still dead.
Every few years I get the urge to get back into comics. I poke around a bit on what's happened. Invariably "what's happened" means that a few more of my favorite characters died. It's not just that they died, but that they tended to die pointless deaths in arcs that got very bad reviews. The deaths weren't stories. They were punctuation in other peoples' stories, like putting an exclamation point in the middle of a sentence! in the hopes that it would make the paragraph containing it more exciting.
So right now, if they made a set with The Blue Beetle, Max Lord, The Elongated Man, Sue Dibny, Rocked Red, Ice, Crimson Fox, The Martian Manhunter, and Mr. Miracle and called it "We're sorry about killing these guys, honest", I'd still wait until it went on sale.
I understand that to establish dramatic tension, something needs to be at stake. I understand that superheroics is a dangerous job. I understand that DC isn't selling us a static, unchanging world - they put out hundreds of pages each month. It's just that being a former member of Justice League International puts you at the top of the hit list. I don't intend to start reading comic books again any time soon. If I found a series I liked, it'd end eventually. Then they'd start killing off the characters when other stories needed a bit more drama.
02.01.2009 - Terrence Marks:Fortunately, we made the goal and will be doing comics seven days a week this month. Unfortunately, Isabel is still working on writing. She's got the flu, so it's been slow going.Isabel spent the weekend getting Namir Deiter's characters page updated, so go take a look at it!
01.27.2009 - Terrence Marks:Fiesta OnlineThere's a mini-map and a large map. If you click on a place on either, you don't move towards it. Quests only show on the large map. You buy your skills at a shop. This means you can't see the skill tree for your character unless you're at that shop.. There's nothing stopping you from buying skills you can't use because you're the wrong class.
How can you tell it's anime-inspired? You get three choices of hair color: aqua, blue, and violet. The starting town included blades of grass hovering seven feet above the ground. The "tutorial quest" consists entirely of walking from one end of the town to the other. I spent most of the game with no idea what I was doing and what I was supposed to be doing.
Monsters talk to you. They say things like "What's one plus one? Wrong. It's three". Now, I think talking monsters are great. It let's you give them a bit of character and gives a bit of backstory to the ten palate-swapped guys they just made up. But don't make them painfully stupid. Why was I killing them? Because some guy promised me a pair of boots and there wasn't anything else to do. They probably deserved it, though.01.26.2009 - Isabel Marks:The archive pages have been updated to both Namir Deiter and You Say it First... although neither of them show story arcs for this year (ND's current arc started back in November of last year and I have not added this recent YSIF arc yet).I hope to have a bigger web site update- at least for Namir Deiter's site- sometime later this week or next... time permitting. Hope everyone is having a good January!
01.21.2009 - Terrence Marks:Kevin & Kell has been reinstated in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution - in color! As the folks who color it, we're chuffed as chips. Thank you, everyone who voted!01.20.2009 - Terrence Marks:I have two awesome videos for you.The Gist has an amazing music video for their song, Believe. I should mention that the drummer is my brother. Is that why I put the video up? No. It just means I can probably get in free to their shows.
Also, the multi-talented Wil Wheaton as The Blue Beetle.
I remember the Blue Beetle back when he was thin. And living. I was a huge fan of Blue Beetle and Booster Gold back in the Justice League International days. I haven't bought superhero comics in since then, but that's a whole 'nother post in itself (which I probably would've put up today if it weren't for all the cool videos). Anyhow, I'm a huge Wil Wheaton fan. To me this is like putting two awesome things together and coming up with something even more awesome. Like the opposite of pizza ice cream.01.13.2009 - Terrence Marks:A little while back, I mentioned that we're both a few months behind on answering email. If you wrote to us, we're not going to be able to reply. Why? My cats enjoy sitting on my keyboard. It's right by the window and gives them a nice view of the patio. The view, apparently, is best from on top of the delete key. I mention this because I left Thunderbird open and they deleted all the email I've been meaning to reply to for the last several months. Then the inbox got corrupted when I tried to restore the messages. This means that everything Isabel and I meant to reply to is gone.If you said something nice, we read it and really appreciate it. I'm very glad you enjoy our work; if people didn't enjoy it, it wouldn't be worth doing. We meant to send you a reply that said something like this, but more personal, and hope you continue to enjoy the comics.
If you pointed out something that needed to be fixed, I probably fixed it. I usually do that when I'm on my way out the door and don't have time to send something better than "Thanks! Fixed!". If I didn't fix it, or if there's something else that got spelled wrong, please email me again so I can get it corrected.
If you sent us condolences on our niece's death, we appreciate your support in difficult times.If you sent us fanart, please, please re-send it so we can put it up properly.
If you sent us anything else or would just like a more personal reply, please e-mail us again.