As always, you can find the rest of these in my Sketchbook 2009 page or you can click below for the newest (and final) additions to 2009.

I can’t talk about The Flash: Rebirth without first talking about my tremendous expectations for the title.

Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Sciver turned me into a huge Hal Jordan fan (a character I previously had zero interest in) with Green Lantern: Rebirth and that book and its pure comic booky-ness stands as one of my favorites of the last ten years or so. Johns’ own run on The Flash taught me how rich the Flash and his world is and now he’s my favorite superhero bar none. It’s been almost ten years after that run ended and Johns is taking another stab at an ongoing with the Scarlet Speedster starting with The Flash: Rebirth mini series. With partner in crime Ethan Van Sciver on art, the “Rebirth” pedigree on full display AND my favorite superhero, I absolutely expected this to be my favorite book of the next ten years. After many, many delays, the last issue was finally released recently and I was, sadly, left a little cold.

Spoilers ahead.

The first issue showed a lot promise. A number of interesting questions and compelling mysteries were raised and we had what was, I assumed, a new villain origin in the series’ opening. There were plenty of nods to the Flash universe and being re-introduced to a lot of these characters made me very excited about getting back into this world of speed and excitement. Van Sciver was at the top of his game here and his dense, ultra detailed pages in this issue more than deserve repeated viewings. Not many artists would redraw the same perspective panel six times just to get the feel of a moving POV shot but Van Sciver did just that in the first two pages of the issue. His subtle expressions, his brilliant storytelling, his amazing portrayal of speed, it’s all just a wonder to behold. The series was off to a promising start but it didn’t take very long for things to go sour.

One of my biggest disappointments story-wise was that who I thought was a “new villain” just ended up being Professor Zoom. Eobard Thawne again? Really? I don’t have a problem with the revolving door that is death in comics anymore but him being the big antagonist in this series is so easy and obvious a choice that when he’s finally revealed at the end of issue #3 it’s less of a bang and more of a whimper. Worse yet, once it’s established that he’s the main villain in the story, the list of suspects behind the murder of Barry Allen’s mother is narrowed down to one. This is one of the bigger mysteries introduced in the story back in issue #1 and who else was it going to be but Eobard Thawne? The fact that it’s so obvious and that it isn’t confirmed until issue #5 causes the reveal to lose any kind of emotional impact on the reader and fall flat in its face.

Similarly, the finale fails to deliver as Professor Zoom once again races to kill Iris in the past and Barry and Wally take him down by simply racing him back to the present and trapping him in some device that cuts him off from the Speed Force. After issue #5 sets up the final conflict, I was already kinda disappointed by the series but I hoped to at least see a high speed throwdown between two speedsters in the vein of “The Return of Barry Allen” or “Blitz.” Instead, we get a 2-3 page race through time and a deus ex machina device that definitively ends the fight. And then the second half of issue #6 contains nothing but a bunch of teasers for, presumably, upcoming storylines in the new Flash ongoing. The series just doesn’t provide a conclusive ending and a lot of things are left up in the air.

There are a couple of additions to the larger Flash mythos that are interesting as well as a couple of character “re-brandings.” The biggest of these changes is that Barry actually created the Speed Force when he first gained his powers. It’s a retcon that is confusing at times (we know Max Mercury was tapping into the Speed Force before Barry was even born) and one that gives perhaps too much importance to Barry over other speedsters but it’s something that could have interesting implications in the future, specially considering Professor Zoom now generates his own “negative” Speed Force.

Max Mercury is back, Wally gets a new costume and Liberty Belle becomes Jesse Quick once again but the most bittersweet of these character changes happened with Wally’s kids. I think the dynamics between Irey and Jai, twins with different variations on speed powers, was never fully realized and with Irey taking up the mantle of Impulse and Jai now powerless, it’s something that’ll most likely never be fully explored. Still, I’m looking forward to seeing how Irey fits in with the rest of the Flash family now that she’s Impulse, particularly with Bart and Max.

And what of the art? To gauge the decline in art quality you needn’t look further than the covers. The first few covers are all amazing but the last few one aren’t. I love the cover to issue #5 but more because of its concept than the draftsmanship contained therein. Ethan Van Sciver is an amazing artist but one that absolutely needs to take his time to deliver and, in spite of numerous delays between issues, it seems like he still didn’t have enough time to meet his high standards. The first issue was amazing as I’ve said before but, slowly, the quality in art starts to decline. The poses become more stiff, the backgrounds more sparse, the pages less sophisticated, etc, etc. Delays in monthly comics have never been a huge issue with me and, in this case in particular, I would absolutely have preferred it if Van Sciver had taken his sweet time to finish this book, even if it took another three months for it to happen. I just hope that, in future projects, he’s given enough lead time to provide pages on par with what he’s done in the past. The artwork is never terrible but the decline is steep and noticeable and it’s disappointing.

Disappointing is really the word to encompass this entire review. Perhaps my expectations were too big to ever be met but some of the problems with this series cannot be ignored. The predictability of the story and the decline in artwork made The Flash: Rebirth a frustrating read at times and considering the pedigree of both Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Sciver it can be downright upsetting. It has its moments (Barry racing Superman in issue #3) and I suppose it’s a good introductory read for newcomers to the Flash universe but to a big fan of the character and a huge fan of Johns’ run on the title, The Flash: Rebirth is… disappointing.

It hasn’t been that long since our last show but here we are with Bit For Byte – Episode 2.

In what perhaps should’ve been our first episode, Mark and I sit to discuss our 5 comfort food games, those games we always end up coming back to. It’s more of a personal episode to get people to know us but we’re also introducing our news segment where we’ll touch on a number of gaming news that get us excited or that we feel are worth discussing. This week it’s Super Street Fighter IV, Portal 2 and Metroid: Other M.

You can listen to the podcast at the Bit For Byte website or you can subscribe to our feeds below.

DC’s line of direct-to-DVD animated features have been of varying quality so far. I think the biggest issue these movies have is the 70 minute time limit which leaves little room for character exploration and makes a lot of these seem like quick “get in, get out” ordeals. I think Wonder Woman succeeded because it was tightly focused whereas Justice League: The New Frontier suffered because of having to adapt too much material in too small a time frame.

Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, the newest in this series of almost bi-annual films, shares some of the same strengths and, unfortunately, some of the same weaknesses of its predecessors.

Crisis on Two Earths starts off in a parallel universe where Lex Luthor is the only surviving hero and an alternate version of the Justice League, the Crime Syndicate, is in control of the planet. We meet Luthor as he escapes into our own world with hopes of bringing in the real Justice League to fight the Syndicate. If you’ve seen “A Better World” from the second season of the Justice League, you know what to expect but whereas the Justice Lords were perhaps misguided in their actions, the Crime Syndicate is just plain evil. It makes the group feel a bit too shallow at times, except for Owlman, of course.

Owlman, perfectly voiced by James Woods, is really the highlight of this film story-wise. His goals are massive in scope and his nihilistic motivations so compelling that it’s almost scary. Unfortunately, aside from Superwoman and her subtle sexual undertones, most of the other characters are not treated as thoughtfully and end up being one note. Green Lantern adds virtually nothing to the story, the Flash is there for nothing but comic relief, the Martian Manhunter’s love subplot is cliched to the point of being contrived and so on and so forth. It’s understandable considering the time limit and the number of characters but it’s a problem nonetheless. It’s even more bothersome when you consider that there are a couple of fights around the halfway mark that really serve no purpose in the story and that time could’ve been better used for character development.

The movie is really solid visually even if the character designs are a bit too angular and the characters seem unnatural at times because of this. I don’t know where the animation in these movies are outsourced to but they seem to be getting better with every one they make even if it’s still nowhere near feature film quality. But an eyesore this movie is not and there are a few bits and pieces throughout that are rather impressive.

There are many easter eggs for long time comic book fans too and I appreciate the use of the more modern costumes in some of the cameos. I always thought the Martian Manhunter’s new costume was much better than the original one and it’s just really cool to see Jason Rusch as Firestorm. I was a little upset over Aquaman’s appearance because he fights in the Watchtower and he’s not a character that’s impressive outside of water but that’s my nerd nitpick.

Written by Dwayne McDuffie, Crisis on Two Earths was initially conceived as a bridge between Justice League and Justice League Unlimited and, in many ways, it works better when taken as part of this larger universe than as a standalone movie. The teleporters, the lack of a seventh member, the reason for the expanded roster in JLU, this is all stuff that works perfectly in context of the series and if you ignore certain things (Hal Jordan instead of Jon Stewart) you can almost sandwich this movie between the last episode of Justice League and the first of Justice League Unlimited and not miss a beat.

To me, it basically comes down to this: is “Crisis on Two Earths” superior to “A Better World”? I think the two Justice League episodes had much better character moments and was better paced than CoTE but the latter works with a bigger scale and a much better finale than the deus ex machina ending of “A Better World.” They are similar thematically but those Justice Lords episodes stand on the shoulders of all the continuity from the DC Animated Universe and it gains a lot of extra leg room because of this.

Crisis on Two Earths is ultimately one of the better efforts in DC’s direct-to-DVD line of movies. It’s not perfect and I feel like these movies won’t start to meet their true potential until the 70-minute cap is raised but the voice acting is solid and so is the animation. You can’t go wrong with giving this one a go.

After Portal 2 was made official, I went back and completed the original game in one sitting so to say that I’m excited about this game is a massive understatement. We all knew it was coming eventually but Valve’s marketing prior to the announcement made the reveal that much sweeter.

Now that I have an awesome PC rig, the question is: 360 or PC?

(The real question is, of course, where in the hell is Episode 3?)

Bit For Byte is my foray into this podcasting business.

My friend Mark and I have been working on this for a while now, figuring out a bunch of stuff on the fly and generally having a good time with it. Bit For Byte is primarily a video game podcast where we’ll be reviewing contemporary games, delving into current news, going back in time to revisit old classics and touching on any other discussion topics we can think of. We’re expecting to put new episodes out in a bi-weekly basis if scheduling allows and our very first episode, where we discuss Bayonetta at length, is up for grabs in the iTunes Store right now.

You can listen to it on the Bit For Byte website here or you can subscribe to our feed with the links below:

I actually have no idea what version this site would be. I’ve completely lost track of all the changes I’ve made to this place but here’s some of the new stuff.

I finally got around to upgrading to PHP 5-point-something (which was about as hard as selecting “PHP5″ from a dropdown menu apparently) and now, replacing the Archives sidebar widget, I have a nice new Archives page up on the header. I threw Animation (which needs some serious updating) under my Artwork page and I created a Sequential Art gallery where I’ll be throwing all my comic related stuff in. I made a bunch of small CSS changes too which I won’t be getting into. Also, the header image now randomizes between my old one, my current and, eventually, any other banners I make.

In short, WordPress is the tits.

We have, from left to right, Gollum from The Lord of the Rings, Darth Vader from Star Wars, Jessica Rabbit from Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Link from The Legend of Zelda, Guts from Berserk, Kenshin from Rurouni Kenshin and Superman. I explain my reasoning behind these choices in this post so let’s talk specifically about this piece.

After the break of course.

So yeah, no background. I wanted a space backdrop but I didn’t feel confident in rendering a space setting in Photoshop. I googled images of space to see if one of those would serve as a decent background but found none that were to my liking so I just went with boring white.

I handled color a little different than usual here because I wanted to get more of a comic book coloring feel. After laying my flats with a brush, I used the lasso tool to select an area and then I kept filling that in with a gradient at 60 something opacity until I got the desired results (or something close to that anyway). I really liked how Jessica’s costume came out because of this method and I’m looking forward to more practice with it because I feel this piece in particular is a little rough around the edges coloring wise.

I knew I wanted Link’s sword and shield to be constructs so I used color holds on them (and all of the character’s “auras”) to give them a lighter feel. I made a conscious effort to not go too crazy with that though and I think it adds without detracting. I also made sure to use a lot of references for color samples so as to keep this stuff of close to the source material as possible. For example, the Blue Lanterns are more of a light blue color and I wanted to make sure I got that kind of stuff down right.

This piece took a while to complete but, oddly enough, I don’t have much to say about it. I was going to break down each character individually but even then I feel as if I could only say a sentence or two about each so I’ll just stop.

Here’s the sweet (and required) progress animation:

As I prepare to write my “Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths” review, I thought it’d be fitting to go back and look at one of the earlier works in DC’s direct-to-DVD line of movies. This isn’t an actual review of Justice League: The New Frontier as it’s a little difficult to dissociate myself from the comic book it’s based it on and look at this movie objectively. There are, however, a number of things that sprung to mind as I watched the movie that I feel are worth discussing.

The first thing I noticed in this adaptation of Darwyn Cooke’s story is that it loses a lot of character because of the lack of internal monologues. These internal speeches are a great vehicle to explore certain characters and Darwyn Cooke uses it to great effect in DC: The New Frontier. These inner monologues are almost inherent of superhero comics and they don’t translate very well to film and the story loses a lot of emotional impact because of this. This is clearly noticeable when Hal Jordan lands in the trench with the Korean soldier and is forced to kill to ensure his survival. It’s an intense read in the comic as Hal tries to figure out how to deal with the situation but it ends up being rather bland in the animated feature. Another good example is towards the end when Barry Allen/The Flash starts to cover The Centre with light from Ray Palmer’s device where he ends up looking perhaps a little less heroic than he did in the comic book.

Since I’m comparing scenes nearly side-by-side here, I think this is a good point as any to mention that the movie is very faithful to its source material, as long as you acknowledge and accept the fact that it’s called Justice League: The New Frontier and not DC: The New Frontier. The focus here is given almost entirely to the Justice League side of the story and a lot of cuts were made to the larger picture originally presented in DC: The New Frontier. The Losers are not here, the Challengers of the Unknown are not here, John Henry is barely mentioned and so on and so forth. They merge characters with events when needed (Hal Jordan goes to space instead of the Challengers) so as to not create plotholes but what is left is very close to what is presented in Cooke’s novel, sometimes even word by word. I did feel like the mystery of The Centre was driving the story in the film for a while though, instead of it being almost completely character driven with The Centre pulling all these different elements together for the finale like it did in the comic. And, of course, the 70+ minute run time ends up hurting the movie as it jumps from event to event with no pauses and little character development. It’s almost like the movie is worried about hitting all the story beats on time and less with the character aspect of it which was a huge element in the comic.

The last thing I want to discuss is perhaps of less importance and has less relevance to the project as a whole but it’s something that, just as it was in the Justice League animated series, I’ve come to notice time and time again: The Flash cannot be accurately represented in any kind of film medium. The concept of a man traveling at the speed of light is almost too abstract to work in a medium where time, real world time, is of such importance. In film, the director handles exactly how and when you receive information whereas in comics it’s ultimately more up to the reader to interpret a single panel as a year’s worth of time or just a single second. In Justice League: The New Frontier, they attempt to show how fast the The Flash is by slowing down everyone else and letting him move in-between static human beings. In the end though, all that’s doing is showing how fast The Flash is relative to regular people. They’re not really showing how fast The Flash is. The Flash, I guess, is ultimately a concept that works best in comic books.

Ultimately, how I feel about this movie is similar to how I feel about Watchmen: it’s a story that was made for comics and one that ultimately works best when it stays in in that medium. The animation and music get the job done, the voice acting is fantastic as usual (thank you, Andrea Romano) and the story works but I wouldn’t recommend this to everyone. If anything, I’d recommend DC: The New Frontier and then, if you liked that, come back and check out this movie to see how it holds up to this amazing ode to the Silver Age of comics.

Tower defense games are perhaps the most thriving and successful video game genre on the iPhone right now. The more passive nature and the “tap to select, tap to place, tap to upgrade” nature of these games lend themselves very well to a device that, I think, has yet to prove itself as a true gaming platform.

Plants vs. Zombies came out on the PC some months ago and I was intrigued by it after trying the demo but I decided to hold off on it until the eventual iPhone release. I just couldn’t wrap my head around playing a tower defense game on my PC when I could be playing Team Fortress 2 instead so I waited. The iPhone version came out at the unbelievably cheap price of three bucks compared the the $20 it cost when it was released on the PC so I purchased it without a thought.

Here are my thoughts in Plants vs. Zombies for the iPhone.

As I said, Plants vs. Zombies (PvZ from now on) is tower defense game where you have to defend your base against oncoming waves of enemies by strategically placing towers on the playing field. In PvZ, your base if your house, your enemies are the zombies, your towers are your plants and the playing field is your yard but the underlying structure of the tried and true genre is the same.

The currency you’ll use to purchase your towers/plants are “Sun,” which are orbs of light that fall from the sky during daytime (more on this later) or which you can get from specific plants after certain intervals. What really sets this game apart from other tower defense games, aside from the humor which I’ll delve into later, is the amount of plants at your disposal. Most tower defense games settle for some 6-12 towers but in PvZ you’ll collect a whooping 49 plants for you to create your very own zombie hell with. Only a handful of them are upgradeable though and some are just variations of others but the diversity is there. Zombies come in many different variations as well and with specific plants being super effective (yes, a Pokemon reference, whatever) against specific zombies and with you being able to bring only 6-9 plants with you during a level, you’re constantly forced to re-think your plant loadout. Luckily, at the plant select screen the game tells exactly which enemies you’ll be facing so there’s never a reason for you to be caught off guard. Also, during your second playthrough, the game locks three random plants in your loadout forcing you to move away from your comfort zone and encouraging experimentation.

Aside from the number of plants and zombies, PvZ shakes things up by introducing different kinds of terrain in which you wage battle. These consist of day, night, water and roof and, rather than being merely aesthetic changes, they change how you’ll approach any given level. The yard grid is mostly the same size during the entire game but during night for example, you don’t get periodic Sun drops and you have to rely on the cheaper, but not nearly as effective, mushrooms to dispatch zombies. Conversely, you can’t plant these night-only mushrooms during the day, at least until you get the Coffee Bean later on in the game. You can’t plant on water until you plant a Lily Pad first, on the roof you can only use catapults and so on and so forth. There are also fog levels (with their respective fog-countering plants) as well as some mini-games interspersed inbetween areas. PvZ moves stuff around just often enough so that you’re never doing the same thing for too long, always keeping things fresh.

And the game is funny. It’s honest to goodness funny. The first time you see a zombie running towards you with a pole vault you’re bound to get a giggle at the very least. Even funnier are the plant and zombie descriptions in the game’s Almanac which have made me laugh on multiple occasions. And scroll all the way down on the Achievement list for another laugh. In the current zombie craze, it’s refreshing to see a zombie title that doesn’t rely on buckets of gore or dark humor. Make no mistake, this game is as bright and cheery as an episode of Winnie the Pooh.

And so we come to my biggest issue with the game: it’s just ridiculously easy. This game has posed no challenge to me at all. I died only once during my first campaign and I’ve yet to die on my second playthrough despite being super cocky at times. It’s rarely even a close call against these zombies and most victories are landslide victories. I thought the punishingly hard goeDefense and PixelJunk Monsters made me really good at tower defense games but even my girlfriend who never plays video games (and somehow got addicted to this game) is breezing through it. I like to be challenged by video games and this game doesn’t deliver on that account.

Nonetheless, this is a really great game with stellar production values, pitch perfect controls, a sunny sense of humor and an unbeatable price. I never bought the PC version so I can’t say how it compares to that. I know the PC version has a Survival Mode which I either haven’t unlocked yet or just isn’t in the game but you get more than enough bang for your buck with PvZ. Just don’t expect any kind of challenge.