Rants & Raves

I feel like I’m doing these every other week at this point, and I do intend to get back to the reviews, but work’s been brutal and at night I often wind up watching TV instead of reading, so I’ve fallen a little behind. Still, some stuff has come up that I find I want to express my opinions on, and so here I go:



Rave – I absolutely love the announcement from Marvel concerning the new Captain Marvel - Carol Danvers (Ms. Marvel)! When the teaser first surfaced, I figured it was either the original coming back or Carol taking over the role – and I wasn’t sure I cared either way. Don’t get me wrong, I knew I’d be interested in the title (Captain Marvel has a tendency to feature cosmic stories, so I’m all over that), but I thought it didn’t matter to me. But the more time passed, the more I was really plugging for it to be Carol Danvers. It’s really a perfect situation – a way for Marvel to build up a major female superhero using a high profile character name (and one that hasn’t been in use for some time). Carol is a great character who never gets as much spotlight as she deserves. This is also a great way to tie a cosmic type of superhero title to a more earth-bound character (something that I think keeps away some more mainstream comic readers). And that uniform – it’s funny, there were so many complaints when the new uniform was shown – I think it looks GREAT. It’s got a military scifi feel, the blue base color matches her Ms Marvel costume, and it just has a great look without being a ridiculous outfit like so many other female superheroes. I can’t wait to pick up this book.



Rant/Rave – I’m not sure which this is. The rumors are that the next X-Box will be a download only system, and I think that’s a great idea. My rant is directed more at that folks who I’ve heard talking about this rumor – and who immediately talk about how bad of an idea it is. At the top of most people’s list of reasons to hate on it – because how will they play their old X-Box 360 games? Well, first of all – how about on that X-Box 360 you have. Secondly, anytime I’ve gotten a new system with backward compatibility I’ve only played older games for a very short while on it – mostly I want to play NEW games. Downloadable games are the wave of the future (see mobile gaming) and X-Box is already well positioned with X-Box Live. Add in things like a Steam app (who are also rumored to be doing something similar) and I think we’re starting to see a convergence of technologies. Physical stores may be unhappy about the lack of media, but consumers haven’t complained about downloading their music digitally. Games are next.



Rave – Dark Horse Presents is really stepping up and doing things that make me want to start picking up some future issues. They’ve already introduced Caitlín R. Kiernan’s Alabaster: Wolves in a recent issue, and now they’re bringing back Ghost (an original concept that got lost in the 90s glut of comics) and doing an Aliens story (just as they used to do). If I can’t get an ongoing Star Wars comic featured in DHP, I’d be happy with some form of film tie-in in each issue.



Rave – I like the idea of Kickstarter, but I just haven’t yet found the cause to make me jump in and pledge. SQT featured one on the blog recently, and I’ve retweeted a couple that I found interesting (especially Tales of the Emerald Serpent and The Art of Carpe Chaos) – but what I’d really like to see is a shared world science fiction anthology featuring some creators whose work I enjoy and would like to see more of. Somebody get on that and I’ll step up and support it.