(1) Wizards No Longer Feels The Force: Wizards of The Coast blames the state of the economy for its decision to drop its license to produce Star Wars roleplaying games and miniatures.
(2) Doctor's Dead Air: Turns out The Last Voyage wasn't David Tennant's last audio adventure as The 10th Doctor as Dead Air is due out in March. What, me, get something wrong? No, you must be thinking of that other guy...(3) Zelda Goes Into The Light: Zelda Rubinstein, who played the iconic medium in Steven Spielberg's Poltergeist has died.
(4) Boneshaker's Priest Explains Steampunk: Cherie Priest, author of Boneshaker, explains the fascination of the steampunk genre.
(5) Dresden Files RPG Gets Release Date: The two-volume Dresden Files Roleplaying Game will be released on June 23 at the Origins Game Fair.
(6) Supernatural Spin-Off: 'Professional' ghost hunters the Ghostfacers, from Supernatural, get their own online spin-off series.
(7) Titanic Sinks: Avatar has now overtaken Titanic as the highest-grossing movie ever.
(8) One-Page Dungeon Compy: The One-Page Dungeons Competition has returned and you have until March 1 to polish off your single-page project.
(9) Bright Future For Marvel Heroes: An 'Heroic Age' dawns for Marvel's characters as it's time for "heroes to be heroes" once more.
(10) Monkey See, Monkey Film: The world's first film shot entirely by chimpanzees is to be shown on the BBC as part of a natural history documentary.
(11) La Femme Rebooted: Supernatural producer McG is to reboot La Femme Nikita, the TV serial based on Luc Besson's ultracool French espionage flick from 1990.
(12) Grave Decision: Evil Ernie comic book creator Brian Pulido has made his feature film directorial debut with The Graves, hitting DVD in March.
(13) Still Not Dead: Bogus reports of Johnny Depp's death are the latest example of bad news spreading like wildfire across the Interwebs without anyone checking the facts first.
(14) Hellraising Zombies Documented: Two new horror-themed documentaries are in the works - one looking at Clive Barker's Hellraiser series and another at zombie cinema.
(15) Batman & Robin Top Of Bottom: Joel Schumacher's Batman and Robin has been voted the worst film of all time by readers of Empire magazine.
(16) Still Being Human: All the stars of the BBC's acclaimed supernatural series Being Human are set to return for the third season, but the action is relocating to Cardiff.
(17) Roman Army Knife: Turns out the Ancient Romans invented the 'Swiss Army Knife' 1,800 years before the Swiss!
(18) Wizards Cashes In On Old School Renaissance: Wizards Of The Coast may have given up on Star Wars (see above) but they're pushing D&D even harder by bringing out, later this year, their own version of the classic 'red box' starter set.
(19) And Gamma World Is Back As Well: Wizards has also announced that in October we will see a return of the popular post-apocalyptic RPG Gamma World, in a D&D 4e-flavoured iteration.
9) DC are doing this too, and I have to say I find it difficult to be excited by the move. There just seems to be something dishonest and manipulative about the way they're saying "everything will be cheerful again" when the only reason it wasn't before was because of a deliberate decision to make it grim and gritty in the first place! I don't know, announcements like this rub me the wrong way, and are a big part of why I don't bother with reading the comics press any more. It's all just hype and nonsense.
ReplyDelete16) Things do seem to be heading for something big in this series, so I can see them coming up with a plausible reason why the three can't stay in Bristol any more. By the way, this second series has been brilliant.
18 & 19) "Cashing in" is exactly right. Here you have a combination of the old-school movement, and a couple of high-profile boxed set releases, and WotC are jumping in and trying to grab a piece of both, without doing any of the work. Cheeky beggars.
9) DC's Brightest Day I have more time for as it's a natural follow-on from the excitement of the Blackest Night arc, but Marvel's "Heroic Age" is definitely spin in the wake of their failed experiments with Civil War, Invasion etc which have driven me totally away from the House Of Ideas.
ReplyDeleteThe only mainsteam Marvel title I read now is Guardians Of The Galaxy, because that is almost totally disconnected from Marvel Earth storylines, and Fantastic Four because, well, they are the Fantastic Four!