And now, the terrible, terrible ending to something that wasn’t particularly awesome to begin with.
My original concept for the Pokémon review that I didn’t write was to mimic the format of Green Eggs & Ham quite carefully. A Seussified version of myself would gripe about not wanting to play the game, a Seussified version of our editor (whose name is, in a crazy collision of indescribable literary convenience, “Sam”) would iterate why this version is so much better than previous installments (therein providing the meat of the review), and I would eventually give in, try it, and decide I like it enough to play it on a boat/on a goat/etc. A sample Sam-I-Am verse:
The battle system
Is adjusted
Skills sets are
No longer busted!
I even had him waxing rhapsodic about online play:
Its heart is in
The multiplayer
And online adds
Another layer
Or maybe two
Or even three!
Compete with friends
Across the sea
Or strangers too —
That also works.
(And friend codes mean
You’ll meet no jerks.)
But of course the idea was ultimately put to rest, and I sort of expected as much; while I was totally in love with the idea of this review format just because of its amazing fit in the Green Eggs & Ham format, I also figured the game needed a more substantial analysis. So… it became GameSpite. And of course Igor is basically the polar opposite of myself, so that meant a totally different, totally anticlimactic, and totally crass resolution. The end.
Also! I hope you managed to pick up this year’s Free Comics Day comics! Well, the good ones, anyway. You can skip the crappy superhero crap. My selections were the “Unseen Peanuts” from Fantagraphics — sure, I have all the Complete Peanuts collections to date, but having grown up reading my aunt’s dogeared Peanuts collections it’s really nice to have all of these “missing” comics in a single volume — and Oni’s Comics Festival. The latter was, of course, awesome, the highlights being:
- “The Alex,” Darwyn Cooke’s surprisingly touching story of towering creative ambition (enhanced by beautiful, subdued colors and wonderfully retro artwork);
- Hope Larson’s simple but charming snow poems;
- Aaaand of course the two Scott Pilgrim features. These were much more compact than last year’scomic, and all the better for it — O’Malley’s artwork is fantastically crisp and looks really great in color, and the panels pack in as many jokes as before while feeling tighter and more purposeful. Did I mention I really enjoy Scott Pilgrim? I should also mention Bryan Lee O’Malley also appears to be a noble human being, at least in that he didn’t punch me in the face when I dropped by his table at Alternative Press Expo and was all DUR HUR YOU DID ART FOR MAISON OTAKU!? That, my friends, is restraint.
I’m just surprised Igor couldn’t get the score up higher. There, that was crass. Didn’t even rhyme. Not sure how I would have done that, anyway. Camp fire, vampire, ah, hang-glider? Oh, never mind.
Shoutout thanks to Nich for sharing free Oni with me.
“How is it your bread? I don’t see your name on it”
Damnit parish, that Maison Otaku site triggered uncontrollable flashbacks to the late 90s. I may never recover.
Igor chugs Maker’s Mark? Apparently he gets paid the big bucks.
Hmm, I thought AGNPH was the go-to place for Poke-porn… Damn my creepy furry knowledge.
But man, I want free Scott Pilgrim comics… too bad we have shit for comic stores around here. And game stores. This is the worse college town ever for that kind of thing.
That was disgustingly hilarious.
For some reason every time I read Sam-I-Am I think of Sean Penn.
My local comic book store didn’t have the Oni Press comic…
I feel so sad now.
I hope you picked up a copy of “Owly” too; its use of pictures, punctuation, and algebra to tell a story is arguably the best thing ever, not to mention it’s just so damn endearing.
Is it bad that Igor reminds of Sharkey somehow?
Kayma: To be quite honest with you. Owly is the kind of comic that makes me want to reach out for a gun and end it all.
I didn’t take part in the free comics, though I did pick up Preacher 1 and 2, as well as Sandman 1-3. The girlfriend is really digging Gaiman’s comic and I’m blown away by the gore filled Preacher.
I’m just glad that pokeporn.com is not a real site!
What? Free comics? Since when?
Also, this comic cracked me up.
The Comics Festival book wasn’t Oni Press. It was Legion of Evil Press, a Toronto outfit associated with The Beguiling.
There was a Unseen Peanuts book? Damn, I didn’t see that one. I wish I’d gotten it. (Was in a bit of a rush…)
Oh, my bad.
The Peanuts book is better than I realized when I grabbed it. It’s annotated! Almost every strip has context, both historical and cultural. Man, Fantagraphics is really doing this series justice.
What the? My comic shop didn’t have those free ones. I got stuck with Sonic the Hedgehog and Mickey Mouse and I didn’t bother taking Spiderman. And some stupid toy they threw in the bin that they wanted to get rid of.
Um. Did you hang out with O’Malley when he was in San Francisco?
There’s something mesmerizing about the rhythm of Green Eggs & Ham’s text. We read books to our baby, but that one in particular gets his attention and he often will sit still and look at the pages. Other books don’t quite have that effect (I’m looking at you, Baby Farm Animals board book!).