Spotlight on: Spinnerette

There's a new hero squirting sticky white fluid everywhere: meet Spinnerette

I've never been an enormous fan of superhero comics; far be it from me, a fan of super-sonic hedgehogs and bright blue weapon-stealing robots, to say that adults can't enjoy something fundamentally aimed at children, but therein lies the problem - Marvel and DC tried to grow up with their audience, and it went about as well as you'd expect for adults clinging to their childhood. Trying to slap a welcome layer of self-knowing deprecation on top really doesn't help either; it just adds layer after ridiculous layer to a pair of universes that manage to reboot and retrograde themselves all the time, yet can never bear to completely drop something from the increasingly tangled Christmas lights that are their respective continuities. I'd go on, but this paragraph ended up running to five hundred words more before I deleted it in favour of simply moving on to today's comic, Spinnerette.

Tongue firmly in cheek, Spinnerette avoids the trap of straight-up parody, instead playing out as a relatively by-the-numbers comic that comes with its own collection of quirks, be it the League of Canadian Superheroes announcing themselves in both English and French or lead girl Heather being sued by Marvel after using a fancy dress costume for her disguise. Everyone has their own quirks; the male Green Gable is forced by tradition to follow his female superhero ancestors by wearing a dress, and Kat O'Nine Tails uses her prehensile tails to be a part-time masseuse. Heather, meanwhile, learns to her dismay while trying to shoot webs from her wrists that, true to a spider's anatomy, her webbing shoots out from her butt; close enough, at least, to make using it an off-puttingly awkward affair in early chapters.

Author KrazyKrow apparently has plans for the future, including a spin-off featuring the lead trio's Canadian counterparts, but none of it is likely to see the light of day without support and recognition. So, head on over to http://www.krakowstudios.com/spinnerette/ to start reading.

Skullkicking some sense into publishers

Well there's a first. In a staggeringly gutsy move, a Russian comic book fan has contacted the creator of Skullkickers and asked if he would provide textless copies of the comic, to make it easier for him to translate it into Russian and pirate the series across the internet.

What he says does make sense, though; with no translation of Skullkickers available, the only reasonable way for Russians to read it is by wiping the comic clean and re-writing the dialogue from scratch. What I want to know is, why hasn't the comic book industry thought to do this themselves?

Manga is by far the best example to look at; despite a strong fanbase in the west, manga publishers often take months to translate and release English language copies; in the case of Fullmetal Alchemist, Viz Media played catch-up for a while after obtaining the rights to the series several years after its original publication, then slowed the pace until US volumes were coming out at a steady pace, a little over a year after Japan. When teams of unpaid amateurs are buying, scanning, emailing overseas then scrubbing, translating and re-writing mere hours after release, it seems incredible that the actual, paid translators aren't able to bash out an English copy in a week, even accounting for quality control and general bureaucracy.

I've long used the rampant piracy of manga as a prime example of the folly of failing to secure a narrow window for international releases, as well an excellent argument for allowing fans more participation in the things they love. Why turn up your nose at free labour? By all means give us professional, localised releases, publishers, but in the space between international releases, sell the blank slates and let the fans fill them themselves; they sure as hell aren't going to stop doing it if you don't, and recognising their efforts brings the potential for greater profits, a better relationship with readers and a stronger, more enduring fan base. And isn't that what we all want?

On the subject of bears

During the many, many trips to the loading screen, Skyrim offers the useful hint that bears, while as deadly as one ton of razor-tipped furball should be, will generally leave you alone if unprovoked.

Lies. Absolute, god-damned lies, issued forth from the mouth of Loki himself. I don't know if my Argonian moisturises himself with steak tenderloin when I'm not looking, but those lumbering fuckers can't get enough of me. The second they clap eyes on me, they come tearing over hill and dale with all piss and vinegar, yearning, aching for juicy reptilian ribs.

And this isn't just me belly-aching. They become as single-minded as a worker ant crossed with The Terminator; a pair of grizzlies charged through the entire Riften town guard, a group of nearby traders and a god-damn dragon, such was their lust for my flesh.

My solution of blowing them downhill with a gust of kick-ass Dovahkiin breath didn't go quite as planned, as it sent the two-dozen warriors I'd been sort of banking on at this point careening towards sea level like skittle pins. On the plus side, they were stopped short when they broadsided the dragon.

But in all seriousness, screw you Bethesda. Just... the hell with you.

Review: Sonic Generations

It's taken an uncharacteristically long time, but Sonic is finally back

As I said in my preview of Generations, I ended my review of Sonic Colours on a fairly bum note. As much as I liked the direction that Sonic Team had taken, I felt that the core gameplay hadn't stepped up its game enough to stop the series sliding back into mediocrity as time goes by and standards continue to rise. I wanted to see Sonic Team stripped of development privileges and to have the series turned over to a third party developer, on the assumption that Sonic Team weren't capable of learning any more lessons. Now, I'm not so sure.

My criticism of Colours was based on the assumption that its flaws were endemic to the gameplay style itself; raw speed seemed to inevitably lend itself to unfair deaths, endless collisions and reaction times beyond the reach of man. It made the new pseudo-racing style feel like a dead-end, one that didn't offer any opportunity for further development and only really had the option of getting faster and more linear. Let me tell you, for a long-term Sonic fan it feels good to be able to say that that is now, very apparently, not the case.

Retro|Spective: Wario Land 2

Barge, kick and elbow your way through with Nintendo's surliest anti-hero

Wario is an unlikely hero, all in all. His story begins in Super Mario Land 2 for the original brick-sized Game Boy, where his appearance as the final boss was that of a bulbous headed, slightly lop-sided and blood-curdlingly ugly troll. He was less of an evil counterpart to Mario and more of a badly deformed twin who the plumber's family bundled into a special home and quietly forgot about; to look at him back then you'd be forgiven for being a bit mystified as to how he could have achieved enough popularity to completely supersede Mario in the next series instalment and transform into a whole new franchise in his own right.

But do so he did indeed, and over the course of two games his appearance was refined from a doughy-faced gremlin into a sneering, leering slab of pork, his frame squat and bullish in comparison to Mario's inoffensive jolliness, with a series of bad-tempered kicks and shoulder-barges and an irate throwing arm comprising his attack range. Here was a character that was, and still is to this day, a delightfully blunt antithesis to Nintendo's pantheon of heroes, bashing his way with bloody-minded abandon in search of nothing more than filthy, filthy riches. Wario is an absolute jerk, and as is generally the case with video games, being bad is always so much more fun than being good.

Digital Remix: JD Harding

This week: video games! Next week: Much the same!

Poor lad Harding is having a difficult time selling his remixes to the masses right now, so this seems to be the right time to big him up and give him a shout. He doesn't stray as far from the beaten path as the OverClocked crowd, but if you're looking for a fresh take on the video game music of the 8 and 16 bit eras that amounts to more than just swapping out instruments in FL Studio then I'd suggest taking a look.

And if you find yourself digging his chops, why not throw wads of money at him at his Bandcamp page?

Spotlight on: Dorkly Bits

There are plenty of video games parodies about, but few that are as self-assured as this. Dorkly Bits shares the anarchic sense of humour of Family Guy, with everything from Samus Aran getting a lesson in gender politics from her agent to the horrifying truth behind Tails' immortality, but brought together from sprites ripped from the very games they're parodying.

It's amazing what you can do with a Photoshop chop-job and the liberal application of Flash, but there's a professionalism that belies the retro graphics; occasionally you'll spot an eyeball not quite where it should be, but the transition from original to modified sprite is pretty seamless overall, and they do a great job of recreating the feel and physics of each game when necessary.

It all adds up to a world we know and love from bygone years, with a real yet surreal twist. If you want to show your support for Dorkly Bits, head over to http://www.dorkly.com/originals and consider buying a copy of this magnificent beast:

Series Review: Torchwood - Miracle Day

Like Jack himself, Miracle Day is a tale of immortality that has no idea when to end

I've never been much of a fan of Torchwood, ever since the slick, technological powerhouse from Doctor Who was relegated to a grot-infested sewer in Cardiff for its first series incarnation. That dark and dingy downgrade exemplified the core problem I had with the spin-off; it wanted to riff off of the no-holds-barred sci-fi nonsense of Who, but was too enamoured with its own ideal of being gritty and adult to ever let itself do anything entertaining with the concept. Where Doctor Who could let its childish wackiness set the pace and tone, Torchwood was in desperate need of its own pace-setter.

Children of Earth proved to be an excellent turnaround for the series in that regard, more than halving the series run of thirteen standalone episodes to just five instalments with one continuous storyline. It was leaner, punchier and, most importantly of all, didn't flop about from point to point like a cat trying to mindlessly pounce on a laser pen dot. And if that seems like a strange analogy, I'm afraid it pretty much sums up where Miracle Day goes wrong.

Series Review: Doctor Who - Closing Time

INT. AN ORDINARY HOUSE, DAY

THE DOCTOR

Oh come on, it's the
penultimate episode of the
series; do we really have
time to piss the story
up a tree like this?

JAMES CORDEN

I'm such a terrible father!

If only I weren't such a

useless shit I might

be able to cope!

JAMES CORDEN'S BABY

I'm the most well behaved

infant in the world, what

possible issues are you having

that couldn't be dealt with

by even semi-competent

parents?

Digital Remix: Sonic the Hedgehog part 1

It's time to showcase the many excellent remixes of a series steeped in memorable music

Excellent music has been a constant across the entire Sonic series, regardless of the quality of the games; the combination of a cartoonish cast and a healthily unrestrained approach to balls-to-the-floor set-piece design is reflected in a legacy of varied, catchy and energetic tunes.

As you'd expect, this has led to a pretty diverse portfolio of remixes and rearrangements, and there are way too many to contain within one post. With that in mind, I'd like to present to you an entire album this week, one of several pulled together by the OCRemix community and one with more than a few highlights to pick out.