Disney's Secret Wars

I am sure you've all heard, from the post below and every news outlet in the world, that Disney has bought Marvel Comics. I don't know if I would call it a wake though. Hell, WB bought DC ages ago and it's been working out fine so far. This business does get me a excited about one possibility, though: Pixar doing Spider-Ham?

Cross your fingers.

Looks like that 70th birthday celebration was a wake.

Today, Disney announced it's intention to buy Marvel Comics for 4 billion dollars. Disney will acquire the rights to over 5,000 characters under this agreement.

Start writing your Loki meets Donald Duck treatment today.

Disney to buy Marvel

"You will learn from Clooney, the Jedi master who instructed me."

This movie looks fucking awesome! Its got a killer fucking cast to boot! Young Ben Kenobi, Keyser Soze, Starman, and...well...Clooney.



Can't wait. This gets me giddy the way Avatar never has, or will.

This comes out monthly.

Archie comics. Incredibly awesome and terrifyingly wretched.

Halo 3 : ODST Preview.

Last week I read a post on Halo.Bungie.Org that Bungie was going to roll out a special preview for ODST, making select stops around the country. Since Portland is next door to Seattle, they came to see us on Day 2.

So on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, with plenty of other options for the day, Aaron and I elected to stand in a mostly empty parking lot in Hillsboro, with a bunch of other sweaty nerds, hoping to play then newest version of Halo 3.

There was a giant black truck filled with 8 Xboxs, and matching Televisions. A mobile Lan Party. The Microsoft P.R. guys were there, in their Bungie shirts. Doing trivia. Handing out "Prizes", which were these silly license plate covers that had the word "Warthog" on them. The P.R. guy also took great pride to let us know that the truck was wrapped in real Kevlar. It all seemed a little bit too Nascar for my tastes, but then again, I'm about 10 years older than their prime demographic.

The game itself was very fun. And as much as the P.R. guy was trying to convince us otherwise, the few minutes we played of the game felt a lot like Gears Of War Horde Mode. It was fun to see covenant dropships again, I feel like they haven't been used widely since Halo 1. The computer sent waves of Jackals, Drones, Grunts and Brutes. One time, it even dropped a Wraith near us, and we had to disable it by hand. I attached a clip of Firefight mode below to give you an idea of how the game looks and feels.

The biggest drawback to the event was that ODST was still in beta, and it crashed a lot. This is kind of surprising for a game that is 1 month away from being on store shelves. Aaron and I got to play for about 4 minutes before it crashed. They had promised us 10, so they let us restart the session, and it played for about 3 more minutes before it crashed again. This scenario happened to pretty much everybody who got to play, which explained the abysmally slow line progress. Given Bungie's track record, these bugs should be squashed by the time the game is released.

There was one question that Aaron had though... where's the Battle Rifle?

EPIC WIN

Our 48 Hour Film

Here is 3ccd Mafia's entry into the the 2009 48 Film Project, Portland Oregon edition. To qualify, we had to use the following:

Character: Brian or Briana merrywether, lab tech.

Prop: A picture frame.

Line: "For crying out loud!"

Genre we drew out of a hat: Mockumentary.

Unfortunately Jonpaul was too busy stuffing his poi hole in Hawaii to be a part of this groundbreaking project.

September is going to make my ass fall asleep.

First off, Halo ODST will be playable in Hillsboro on Sunday, August 23rd. I have to convince my co-hort Pilot to Gunner to go to this event with me. Halo ODST will be released on September 22nd, a scant one month from now.

Second-ofly, Kotaku has a small writeup on the three new maps that will be released with Halo ODST, Heretic, Citadel, and Longshore. Heretic is a remake of Midship, which is a Halo 2 classic.

All of this, plus the new Batman Arkham Asylum game pretty much ensures I'll be indoor for most of September.

Crossing my fingers for rain.

Hey, remember Minority Report?

Moving images in print publications have long been featured in science fiction films set in the distant future. Well, it looks like the distant future is September 18th, 2009! That is when CBS will be running video ads in Entertainment Weekly Magazine!

From cnet.
'The technology for the battery-powered ads was manufactured by a Los Angeles-based company called Americhip, and each ad can handle about 40 minutes of video.'

40 minutes!? Holy crap! If they could push the tech a little more you could be watching one hour dramas while you wait around at the Doctor's office. Speaking of the tech, here is a little more.

'The screen, which is 2.7 millimeters thick, has a 320x240 resolution. The battery lasts for about 65 to 70 minutes, and can be recharged, believe it or not, with a mini USB cord--there's a jack on the back of it. The screen, which uses thin film transistor liquid crystal display (TFT LCD) technology, is enforced by protective polycarbonate. It's a product that has been in development at Americhip for about two years, spokesman Tim Clegg told CNET News via e-mail.'

That's effin sweet! So are they using this tech for good or evil? Well, they're advertising shows like TWO AND A HALF MEN! Does that answer your question? George Schweitzer, CBS marketing president, tries to explain himself.

"The evolution of marketing television in the fall--it used to be as simple as this," Schweitzer said, holding up a vintage copy of TV Guide. "It was axiomatic in those days. If you took an ad in TV Guide, people watched your program. Not anymore."

Yeah, because actually making the shows good so people would want to watch them would have been harder than creating groundbreaking tech.

Changing gears here, I want to address the environmental impact. These ads are really just little LCDs, right? I am pretty sure that the stuff in them isn't great for ecosystem. So what happens when we start filling magazines and newspapers with these things? Before long they're going to be on cereal boxes and beer cans too. So if this tech catches on we're talking billions of little LCD's being created for essentially one time usage. What do we do with our copies of EW when we're done with them? Can we still recycle them? Or do we have to tear the ads out first? If so, how many people do you think will do that? Then we'll have LCDs and paper being dumped into landfills.

When looking around for some info about the environmental impact of LCDs, I ran across this little article. And hey, its from cnet as well!

'A chemical used to make LCD televisions and semiconductors could cause more global warming than coal-fired power plants, a report warns.'

Well that's just great. Seems a high price to pay just let people know about a new season of How I Met Your Mother. Read both articles and then have an opinion.

Xbox 360 Update and a New, Cheaper Playstaion 3.

I just returned from a week out of town and found that my Xbox had an update waiting while I was away. This new update is actually small changes, compared to the last overhaul. But the biggest thing that is useful for me is the ability to browse Netflix titles that aren't in your instant queue. Now when I login, it gives me the top 50 movies in each category. Last night I checked out an Episode from the first season of "Lost" and "Step Brothers", it's nice to not have to load them to your queue first.


Also, in Sony News, they've come one step closer to getting me to buy one of those damn things by Dropping the price a hundred bucks. I don't care if it's "slim" but I guess it is. I'd be a lot more impressed if they'd build in the PlayStation 2 backwards compatibility like they had in the original PS3s.

Apes! Apes! Apes!

Hey, do you like Planet of the Apes as much as I do? Then head on over to Hulu because those guys just posted the entire series of Return to the Planet of the Apes, the ill advised 70's cartoon series. Check it out!

More fun than Grape Juice Plus.

Thanks, io9.

Marvel's 70th Birthday

Last night I went to Marvel Comics 70th Birthday Party at Cosmic Monkey. Pretty fun stuff. All Marvel products were 50% off, so I snatched up the Amazing Adult Fantasy Omnibus that I have had my eye on for years. I never have $75 to spend on comics, but $37.50? Sold!

I also got to meet Spider-Man again. He didn't seem to remember me, but I guess I look a lot different than I did at 7. He would not hold up a sign saying KRONSER IS A PUNK.

All in all a pretty fun time. They even had a birthday cake that looked like Marvel Comics #1. I did not eat any as I don't really like cake and doing so would have caused the cake to go from 'Near Mint' to 'Damaged' fairly quickly. No one wants that on their conscience.

And to think that you only need to know all 70 years of continuity to understand EARTH X.

Walking Dead on TV!?

Hey, motherfuckin Variety says motherfucking Frank Darabont is putting together a Walking Dead TV series. Sounds cool to me, but what do you guys think?

I just hope they don't stick too close to the comic storyline. I've already read those stories, you know? This is a good opportunity for more stories set in this world without using the books as storyboards. At the very least they should come up with a new opening. The comic started just like 28 Days Later, with the hero waking up in the hospital having missed the rise of the zombies. Not saying it was a ripoff though. Both the comic and the movie were made at the same time so it was coincidence as far as I am concerned.

Also, I think Vol #10 comes out today.

Watch Spaced on Hulu

Spaced is a BBC sitcom, 14 episodes in total by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright, the guys who brought you Shawn of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.

I've been meaning to watch this series for a couple months now. I could have gotten it from movie madness. Or put it on my netflix cue. Borrowed it from a friend. Downloaded it illegally. Look for copies on dailymotion. Purchased it. But I usually just wait for things to come to Hulu or instant Netflix instead. As you may have noticed by now. Spaced on Hulu.

Netflix adds Lost to it's streaming service

See. This is why I held off on buying those DVDs.

That and I can borrow all of them from Marq pretty easily.

Netflix to add Lost to Streaming Library

Mega Man History in chart form.

It won't let me post this picture, but it's worth visiting.

A chart showing every mega man release ever. Year by year.

In my humble nerd-pinion, they could have stopped at #2 and it still would have been the best series ever.

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