Thursday Morning Superhero

The big news that I read today, was this great interview with Cullen Bunn by Multiversity Comics.  For whatever reason, I have been reflecting on the Sixth Gun recently, and I have mixed emotions knowing that the script for this series has reached its conclusion.  I still feel that the great comic series have a definitive beginning and end, and cannot wait to read the conclusion when the final arc, Boot Hill, drops.  It is going to be a long wait to find out what happens in the finale, but our journey begins in April and ends in June.  I cannot wait.

Pick of the Week:
Star Wars #11 - If any fan is having a hard time waiting for The Force Awakens, I suggest you start reading some comics.  This series has been the perfect cure for the pain that it is to wait for a movie that hopefully can live up to its trailer.  When we last left, Sana (Han's wife), Solo, and Leia were racing to save Luke from Grakkus the Hutt, who along with the help of the Gamemaster has Luke set to fight for his life for sport.  Chewbacca and C3P0 are already trying to help the young Jedi, but Dengar has other plans for Chewy.  This week we are treated to a Wookie fight, Luke taking on a half-beast, half-robot called Kongo the Disemboweler, and a secret plan from the Gamemaster that involves the Empire. This issue ended far too quickly.  Loving this series.

The Rest:
Paper Girls #2 - The mystery grows in the second issue of Paper Girls from Brian K. Vaughan.  We aren't given any more clues as to why mysterious creatures have descended to earth, but now in addition to the creepy dudes walking around we have pterodactyls to deal with.  At least that is what they look like to me.  Given what is happening outside, the girls agree to go to Mac's house and at least arm themselves with a gun.  This is when we learn that we may be dealing with the rapture, as Mac's dad vanished into thin air in his sleep.  Not sure what is happening, but I like it.



Nailbiter #17 - Is Agent Barker going down the dark path of other killers from Buckaroo?  What is Dr. Glory hiding and what is his role in this?  Despite learning about the caves, there is still a lot to uncover in Buckaroo.  On top of that, a Buckaroo native might be a serial killer that has been killing victims in Atlanta.  With the feds taking control of the Buckaroo investigation, Barker turns to the only person she can trust, Finch.  Looks like we are about to be treated to a new investigation to add a bit of flavor to the big picture.  The mystery grows and I am looking forward to where this is headed.

James Bond #1 - We are gifted this week with a Bond story penned by Warren Ellis.  We see a brutal side of Bond, as the issue opens with him seeking revenge for the death of 008.  With 008 out of the picture, Bond has to pick up additional cases as M searches for a replacement.  Ellis gives us a nice twist, as the political climate in the UK restricts travel with a weapon, and Bond is forced to travel to Berlin to investigate a new synthetic drug, unarmed.  Enjoyable debut that will appeal to both Bond and Ellis fans.  I am very curious to learn what Ellis has planned for 007.




POSTED BY MIKE N. aka Victor Domashev -- comic guy, proudly raising nerdy kids, and Nerds of a Feather contributor since 2012. 

Skyrim: Dragonborn DLC

[Skryim: Dragonborn, Bethesda Game Studios, Bethesda Softworks, 2012]

what took so long?

I realize that this third and final downloadable content package for Skyrim came out about a year-and-a-half ago, but I'm just getting around to it. When I played Oblivion, I bought the Game of the Year Edition, so all of the DLC came with the game. I racked up over 180 hours on the thing and completed every quest in the game, DLC included. However, with Skyrim I bought it on Day One and, to be honest, when I finished the main story line I was ready to put it down for a while. I never thought it would take me this long to get back to it, though. That said, here we are, and here's my critique of the highest rated of the Skyrim DLC offerings.  

what's the buzz? Tell me what's-a-happenin'!

After you've downloaded the Dragonborn DLC package and you start to play, you are quickly attacked by a group of cultists on behalf of one Miraak, who turns out to be the first Dragonborn. This type of aggression will not stand, man, so you set out to find Miraak and put him down. In order to track down your failed assassin, you hop on a ship headed for Solstheim, an island in Morrowind. Long time Elder Scrolls players will remember Morrowind from the third game in the series, and Solstheim from Bloodmoon, an expansion pack for the same. 

You do some sleuthing in an attempt to locate Miraak, but the islanders only seem to have a vague recollection of who or what he is. It's almost like they've all had the same mostly forgotten dream about the man, but they can't seem to remember any details about the first Dragonborn. Eventually, you find your way to the Temple of Miraak where you team up with Frea, a woman from Skaal whose people are being tormented by the evil, power-hungry villain. It turns out he is using the people of Skaal in an attempt to return to Tamriel and take over. He has placed them, along with many other citizens of Solstheim, into some sort of a trance where they are using formerly helpful magic stones to bring about his triumphant return and the downfall of Skyrim. 

You learn all of this when you find a "Black Book" deep in the recesses of Miraak's Temple and read it. Upon opening the text, you and Frea are transported to the Apocrypha, which is another dimension temporarily inhabited by Miraak as he prepares for his hostile takeover of your homeland. For reasons that don't really make sense, considering that you are the only other Dragonborn in Tamriel, Miraak doesn't find you to be much of a threat and he sends you and Frea back to Solstheim. I understand that it's necessary in order to keep the events of the DLC moving along, but this is a HUGE plot hole in the story. I mean, come on, he's already sent cultist assassins to kill you once. You spend the rest of the story gaining enough power to eventually take the man down. He's got you right there, in his dimension, surrounded by his cultists, underpowered and untrained, and he lets you go?! 

Now, I realize I've been talking about magic rocks and other dimensions, so obviously a little suspension of your disbelief is necessary to enjoy the game, but I just couldn't ever let go of this plot hole in my head. I won't go into too much detail about the rest of the story for those who haven't played it yet but intend to, but you literally spend the rest of the game trying to gain enough power to defeat Miraak. Due to that fact, you have to assume that you don't possess the necessary powers at this point in the game. It's the Skyrim equivalent of a Bond villain monologuing just long enough for James to escape from the overly-elaborate trap that has been set for him and defeat whatever SPECTRE baddy has come for him this time. All Miraak had to do was kill you, right then and there, and it's over. He wins. Instead, he sends you back to Morrowind to learn everything you need to know to eventually defeat him. Ugh. Sorry to harp on it so long but it really bugged me. 

so, you hated it?

No, I actually really enjoyed it. For one thing, you FINALLY get to ride dragons! It's something that I'd been dying to do since I killed my first dragon nearly three years ago. Not only that, but it was nice to have something new to do in the Elder Scrolls universe while waiting for the Elder Scrolls Online to come out (Thanks for pushing it back six months, Bethesda! Boo!!!) Unlike Oblivion, which I beat in its entirety in one huge go around, this served to break up Skyrim into at least two chunks. I fully intend to purchase at least one more piece of DLC because I had so much fun returning to Tamriel in Dragonborn. Aside from that one huge plot hole, it was a truly enjoyable experience. I can't wait to get Dawnguard or Hearthfire and do some more exploring of my favorite RPG world while I wait for the Elder Scrolls Online to come out. 

time for the breakdown

While I didn't enjoy this DLC as much as the Shivering Isles from Oblivion, it definitely holds its own against the Knights of the Nine. With the aforementioned postponement of the Elder Scrolls Online, my hunger for more of Tamriel has only grown. It was the perfect time for me to dig back into Skyrim and, having put off buying any of the DLC until now, I was able to do so without starting over and re-playing any parts of the game that I've already beaten. While it isn't revolutionary, Dragonborn was an enjoyable trip back into the lands of the Elder Scrolls and I can easily recommend it for anyone who is itching to get back into the zone in preparation for the next Bethesda release. 

the math

Objective Score: 7/10

Bonuses: +1 for just giving me more Skyrim. I truly love these games and, as long as they aren't total garbage, I will continue to enjoy most anything Bethesda puts out in the Elder Scrolls universe. 

Penalties: -1 for that HUGE plot hole I just couldn't get past. I mean, come on! He's right there! JUST KILL HIM!!! Ugh. Okay, I'll let it go now. 

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10. A mostly enjoyable experience.   

We Rank 'Em: Best/Worst James Bond Villain Schemes

I think most fans of the franchise will agree that for the scheme of a James Bond villain to be truly excellent, it must also be totally insane. Pinky, the Brain, Dr. Evil, and Doofenshmirtz all owe their raison d'etre to this particular loop and swirl in the James Bond signature. Some of the less-memorable Bond villains are just your run-of-the-mill megalomaniacal low-lives -- your drug dealers, your assassins, your circus...troupe...somethings? -- but the best of the bunch are dangerous, bizarre men with unreasonable resources and legions of people who inexplicably do their bidding.

Here at Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together, we like things that come in sixes, and if they don't come in sixes, we jam that haxagonal peg into whatever round hole we see fit and call it a day. With that in mind, I give you the six Best/Worst/Most Insane/Totally Awesome schemes for world domination from the James Bond movies.

And yes, you may be pondering what I'm pondering, but nylons chafe me so...

6. From Russia With Love
There's nothing particularly outlandish about the scheming going on in this the second of the James Bond films, because they hadn't really hit their stride and figured out the formula yet. But after James Bond killed Dr. No in the first movie, Dr. No's cronies in evil cabal SPECTRE decide that Bond must be killed and embarrassed. They want to do this by secretly filming Bond shagging a Russian spy, and making plans to release the fabled Bond Sex Tape. The irony, of course, is that Bond has throughout the series shagged more Russian spies than are are -istans in the former Soviet bloc. It would be like someone trying to discredit me by leaking a video of me typing this blog post.

5. Tomorrow Never Dies
In this movie, a thinly veiled Rupert Murdoch (called Eliot Carver) wants to start a war so that his media empire can drum up better ratings. This is actually not so crazy, since The Spanish-American War was brought to us by William Randolph Hearst, who was then himself thinly veiled in a movie.

4. You Only Live Twice
Ernest Stavro Blofeld, you nut. Bond's arch-nemesis throughout the late 1960s, this bald, facially scarred criminal mastermind ran SPECTRE and dreamed up great ideas like capturing U.S. and Soviet satellites and stashing them away in the volcano where he lives and works. Yep, volcano. As it turns out, Dr. Evil only had to be exaggerated ever so slightly to turn Blofeld into a comedy character. After capturing the satellites, Blofeld was going to make sure each side blamed the other for his shenanigans, therefore creating a power vacuum into which SPECTRE could step.



3. Moonraker/On Her Majesty's Secret Service
Both of these movies involve elaborate and nonsensical plans to create super-diseases that the Bond villains (Hugo Drax and Blofeld again, respectively) develop, before leveraging their potentially genocidal capabilities to extort what they want from the British government. What's great about Bond is that in his world, the British government is still a world power. That may be one of the nuttier fixations of the Bond villains as a therapy group.

2. A View to a Kill
Max Zorin sure has a sufficiently dumb plan for world domination, unfortunately he's not so creative. His plan is pretty much the same as Lex Luthor's from Richard Donner's Superman. He wants to set off some bombs in California in order to cause a bunch of earthquakes, thus dominating the burgeoning tech industry in Silicon Valley. In many Bond films, the villains plan on detonating nukes, but in this movie, the nukes are only a means to a larger end, the boot-kick in a giant Pacific Rim game of Mousetrap.

1. Goldfinger
The accepted wisdom is still that Goldfinger remains the most iconic of the James Bond movies, and the villain's plot for world domination is no less iconic. Auric Goldfinger wants to gas all of the guards at Fort Knox and detonate an atomic bomb inside the vaults in order to irradiate the United States' gold supply, making it worthless and rendering his own cache of the sparkly stuff more valuable. What Goldfinger didn't take into account though, apart from James Bond's infallibility, is that if you dangle enough gold in front of people, they don't care if it's poisoned, cursed, wrenched from a dead man's grasp, whatever, they'll take it.