Hey everyone! I hope you all had a good Monday. My Monday was spoiled by the fact that it wasn’t a second Sunday. I could have used a second Sunday to sleep in. Other than not being to sleep in though, my Monday wasn’t bad. I went in to work. The computer network was wonky all day which made it hard to get work done. But what does this intro have to do with Free Comic Book Day 2013, you ask? Nothing really. I’m just telling you how my day went.

Saturday, May 4, 2013, on top of being Star Wars Day (May the Fourth Be With You) was also Free Comic Book Day…at least in North America. A day where you could walk into a participating comic book store and get…free comic books. A number of publishers, big and small offer stores these specially printed comic books at a severely discounted price as a thank you for fans. Ingenious comic book store owners will find a way to make your trip even more worthwhile, like having specials on merchandise (comic books or otherwise), raffles or what have you.

My local comic book store is Zone 51 in Trois Rivieres and they did the specials and raffles thing but on top of that, they set up a Playstation 3 so that people could try out the new Injustice game that came out recently. My take on the game is that it was really sweet. If you like fighting games and DC characters, this is the game for you. There’s a nice selection of characters to choose from and famous locales from the DC universe to fight in. If you don’t like the look of a character, there are alternate looks available as well. The game designers have promised four add-on characters. So far Lobo and Batgirl have been announced. I don’t know if he’s in the story mode, but I can’t see how they could leave out Darkseid. Other acceptable (for me) choices would be Black Canary, Firestorm, Deadshot, Huntress, Captain Cold (I’d say Mr. Freeze, but why not feature some non-Batman villains?)….OOOOOOH! BOOSTER GOLD!!! In short there are a LOT of characters I’d love to see in the game.

Less awesome than Injustice, was Iron Man 3, which I went to go see on Sunday. It was a perfectly serviceable movie, but I didn’t have that feeling of elation when I left the theatre like I do when I go see a movie I really enjoyed. Robert Downey Jr. is great as Tony Stark, it’s just a shame that nobody else is as interesting to watch. There’s a big twist in the movie that I don’t want to spoil (it’s easy enough to read up on if you haven’t seen the movie and really want to know) that just pulled me out of the movie. It involves the main villain. Some are hailing it as a genius move but I thought it was really cheesy. Maybe I’m too much of a purist. The final battle sequence, although it was ambitious, just lacked flash, which is my gripe about all the Iron Man movies so far actually. There are movies where I check my watch because I’m hoping not too much time has passed and that there’s still more awesome to come. Iron Man 3 was not such a movie. Also, I’d heard ahead of time that there was an extra scene after the credits so we stuck it out to see it. I was HOPING for a glimpse into the future of the Marvel movie franchise. Without fully spoiling it, I was disappointed.

Okay, so that’s all for this week. More nonsense to come next Monday. In the meantime, enjoy this week’s comics and extra content (no promises on what I’ll get done).

Hey everybody,

It’s Monday, time for me to jibber jabber. I don’t have any big site news to reveal, so I’ll talk about what I’ve had on my mind lately:

Fantasy Flight Games’ X-Wing Miniatures.

A little history first. When Fantasy Flight Games got the Star Wars license, I was cautiously optimistic. I know that FFG always produces great looking games which I mostly enjoy, but Star Wars is a tough franchise to nail properly in games (at least for me). Of the first three games they announced, I was most intrigued by their cooperative living card game (LCG). I had next to no interest in their roleplaying game system since I already have two fully fleshed out RPG systems already. X-Wing Minis was somewhere between the two, but I’ll admit I was leaning towards “meh” since Wizards of the Coast’s attempt hadn’t exactly been a rousing success. Ultimately, the LCG was delayed because they scrapped the original concept (which I liked) and started over with a competitive game (which I was a little less plussed about).

X-Wing was released last fall. I bought the starter at Montreal Comic-Con. I delayed on the purchasing of additional ships because I didn’t want to sink too much of con budget in one product. I could buy those from my local gaming shop. When I got home from the con, I looked through the components and then put the game on my shelf.

I’d read that a lot of players were suggesting buying two starters as a cost efficient way to double up on ships, and the extra cards, dice and templates were always useful. My local gaming shop had the starter so I picked up a second copy some time later. I asked my friend who owns the store if he was going to get the expansion ships and he assured me he would. Fine. The second copy remained unopened in my computer room (it didn’t even make the gaming shelf). I should point out that this happens to a lot of the games I buy, because board games require people getting together which isn’t always easy to schedule.

Finally, about a month ago, I decided to open the second starter and then organized all the components which got me jazzed to actually try the game. At our last Age of Animus Storytelling Game playtest (hey, look at that, I worked the site into this entry after all), I discovered that my local gaming shop had finally received the expansion ships, so I picked those up and told my friend Frank (the biggest Star Wars fan in my circle) that we were going to have to play and he agreed.Usually, when I suggest something like that, nothing ever comes of it, but this time! Oh this time! I was determined.

So three weeks ago, Frank, Melanie and I got together to play. The first hurdle was that Melanie doesn’t speak/read English and the game was…well in English. No problem, most of the components used easy to remember symbols. Explain things once and we’re mostly good to go. The second hurdle was that I hadn’t pre-constructed teams. We did that on the fly. I played 150 points of Rebels against Melanie and Frank who each had 75 points of Imperials. I ended up losing the game and we screwed up a number of rules (mostly my fault), but we had a lot of fun. A good sign that they would be up to play again.

And play again we did on Saturday. Frank wanted to try the Rebels, so we played the same setup, with him and me switching places and again the Empire prevailed.

These two sessions have sold me on the game. It’s a lot of fun. From what I’ve read, it plays a lot like Wings of War (for those who are familiar) with some neat little innovations (like using templates for movement rather than cards). The ships are incredibly detailed. The one thing I liked about WotC’s game was that the ships looked good (although the plastic had a tendency to warp) and these minis blow the old minis out of the water. Frank compared the Slave I mini to his Code 3 Slave I (the most detailed repro on the market) and it came out surprisingly favorably in the comparison (for the price point).

The other thing I took from our games is that I need more ships. I have two starters (which gave me 2 X-Wings and four TIEs) and one of each of the expansions except for the solo X-Wing and the solo TIE which weren’t in stock at my local gaming store. At 150 points, the Rebels need to use at least four of the five ships I own (Frank used all five, but he had no points left for upgrades). On the Imperial side, both games left out two TIEs. The only variety was from our choice of pilots and upgrades. With more ships to choose from, I imagine the dynamic would be quite different. I joked on Facebook that I wanted enough ships to reenact the Battle of Yavin, but ideally, I’d like two more Y-Wings, A-Wings and TIE Interceptors, and the solo X-Wing and two TIEs to get the exclusive upgrades (WEDGE!!!!!) and round out complete wings of each (I’d have two complete TIE wings).  I just need to get back to Steve’s to make it so.

I plan on bringing the game to my regular gaming group to see what they think of it. They REALLY dug Quarriors. I’m curious to see how X-Wing will rate compared to it.

Oh, and I hope they make a Z-95 Headhunter.

I didn’t draw an Animus Wars strip this weekend and it’s unlikely that I will draw more Animus Wars strips in the future. It seems like a sudden decision, but I think it’s the right call.

It’s been half a year and I’m barely through a third of the movie. In theory, that means I’d need another year and a half to get through the story. That’s the realization I came to this weekend and I was left asking myself if I wanted to work on this one project for that long.

There’s only so much time I can dedicate to the site. I want to maximize my time investment and sadly Animus Wars is a product of limited return for such a big investment of time. It’s the product that I’d have the most trouble marketing given that it’s a Star Wars parody.

Scott Kurtz over at PVP once said something to the effect that he feels that the time people spend riffing off of other people’s material would be better spent working on their own material.  I’m beginning to see the truth of that statement.

Working on Animus Wars has been keeping me from doing my FnF crossover, because I don’t feel I can draw more than three strips a week and have time to work on my writing. Honestly, I barely get any writing done as it is.

And then, there’s the sad fact that Animus Wars isn’t proving to be as fun as I thought it would be when I started. I didn’t think it through. There were one or two little gags that really got me jazzed about the project and I haven’t even reached them yet.

I won’t say that the work I put into the project was a total loss. Every page I draw is a learning experience as I try to figure out the best way to lay things out on a page. I also got to draw some different things I wouldn’t have tried in a normal Funnies strip. And I do like really like some of the stuff I did so far. My only regret is that I was so slow in realizing that it wasn’t such a good idea after all.

So that’s it. No more Animus Wars. Sorry. Unless you pay me. Twenty bucks a page. 😉