Meanwhile, Across the Sea...

So I came short of 50,000 words in this year's nanowrimo, somehow managing to come in about 1,900 words under.  First time in the last three years I didn't clear the 50k mark.  I ain't even mad.  My main problem this year might have been too much research, too much getting caught up in the world-building and not concentrating on pushing through and not looking back.   I suppose I probably could have finished if I hadn't spent a bunch of time putting stuff like this map together:

Then again, that's part of the fun for me.  Coming up with a semi-believable world to explore and hopefully have the readers or audience or whatever explore it too.  This isn't even a final map.  There are rivers to carve, some mountains need to be moved, and a massive forest to cultivate at the foot of those Northern peaks.  Also, Starshadow Bay is a little bit too far north, so some tectonic shifting may be necessary...

See what I mean?  I blame the folks over at the Cartographer's Guild for this sudden fictional geography fixation, even though they don't know who I am, because I only lurk those forums.

NaNoWriRe? (National Novel Writing Research)

Add a copy of the documentary series "Going Medieval" and I'll be ready to rock this November.  I've been working through the "Song of Ice and Fire" series, and George R.R. Martin's fanatical attention to detail has inspired me to be a little less carefree with the anachronisms and actually make a trip to the library to pick up these weird paper rectangles with words written in them.   Most likely won't be as detailed with the food though.  I don't intend to reach the 50k word count on meal description alone.

Since I've already done a ludicrous amount of world-building for my webcomic "An ArrowIn the Moon", this year's novel is going to be set in that same world.  Drawing a full color comic, it turns out, takes a bit of time and there's a whole (fictional) world out there, ripe for exploration but I won't ever get to share with anyone if I want to keep the comic story moving at a reasonable pace.

The books in the picture are: 

Daily Life in the Middle Ages

Life in a Medieval Castle

Medieval Underpants and Other Blunders

Medieval Underpants is probably the best for writers.  Life in a medieval castle feels a little dry, but it's got good info.  Daily life in the Middle Ages is a good quick reference.

Making Drawrings

I write this blog post as Samsung is on the cusp of releasing what the media (other bloggers) are calling "the most powerful tablet ever".  The Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition.  You'd think they'd have come up with some cool name, like the X-99 Velocirapter Diesel Face Punch, but I digress.  To do my part in maintaining the perpetual tech-hype machine, I've gone and bought... a good condition unit of last years model.  Dude, I'm not made of money, what do you expect?  I ain't one of those chumps what camps outside the Apple store because they're releasing a new thing that's the same as the old thing, but with color options.

But I didn't start this to talk about planned obsolescence and Apple and all that noise.  I just wanted to do a quick rundown of a pretty cool app called Layer Paint that in my opinion, was the best solution for drawing on the go with a fairly slow android tablet.  Layer Paint doesn't have quite the feature set that Sketchbook Pro does, but I was on a Le Pan II and the lag in combination with the crayon-sized stylus was just too much to overcome for most purposes.  Not so with Layer Paint, which at a mere three bucks from Google Play gives you layers, canvas sizes up to whatever your device can handle, and a decent selection of brushes, along with the basics like fill and gradient.  Here's two of the better drawings I squeezed out of the Le Pan II / Layer Paint combo:

 

Both of those are from requests at a sub-reddit I frequent: /r/redditgetsdrawn  It's great for drawing practice by the way.

After upgrading to the more powerful processor of the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1, I still used Layer Paint and to scrawl this image:

5 Layers, 1800 x 1800, the Galaxy Didn't stutter at all.

Truth be told, I intend to start using Sketchbook a little more now because the horrible lag is gone, but I'll still fire up Layer Paint for quick sketches.  It's just simplistic and doesn't get in its own way, like those weird word processors that have minimal features and just edit text, looking like an old DOS screen.  It remains to be seen if the current setup is good enough to maybe try a page of An Arrow in the Moon.

One Last Slice of Life (Dexter finale spoilers)

Dexter is over.  The series finale aired this past Sunday.  It was just okay. 

That's the most I can say for the final season of a show that at it's best, may have been the most original and well-written crime/procedural drama on television ever (and it turned that genre on it's head).  Unfortunately, as even great shows tend to do, Dexter became a sort of parody of itself in the last season.  So the end wasn't the epic finale the fan base desperately wanted it to be (oh, some people are pissed), but I also feel like it wasn't awful enough to detract from the overall warehouse of awesome that was the entire Dexter series.

MULTIPLE SEASON SPOILERS BELOW.  YE BE WARNED.

Anyway, in my opinion, the main problem with this season, and the previous one to some extent, is that most of the really interesting stuff already got thoroughly explored in earlier seasons.  All that remained, really, was the plot-centric question of what happens to Dexter, as in: does he get away or not?  The answer: Sort of.  He fakes his death and becomes a lumberjack.  Because that's what people do when they want to disappear.  Just ask Wolverine.

Then there's Hannah.  There wasn't really an aspect of her that wasn't already handled in a more likable package (Rita, Lumen), or a more annoying one (Lila, aka the titty vampire).  So you get Hannah and there's not a lot to her, because other than being an amalgamated version of the previous women, she disappears for a good portion of the two seasons she's featured.  In her first season, she has to share "Big Bad" status with Issak Sirko, who is actually sort of interesting until he gets blown away by his boring henchman, who then gets conveniently blown away by Quinn.  Then she reappears halfway through the last season and is suddenly the love of Dexter's life, even though we honestly never got to see why she's so special other than some on-the-nose dialogue where Dexter flat out says so.

At least we got some closure with Cody and Astor...  Nah, I'm just messin' with ya.  Cody and Astor just sort of bugger off because we need to concentrate on Harrison and ignore the fact that, like the youngest child of a sitcom family, a lot of his stuff is going to end up a rehash of the things that the older kids already went through.  Also, seeing too much of Rita's kids would lead more people to question why Dexter thought it best to send his child to live with a fugitive murderer he's known less than a year instead of his actual blood relatives.

The last season also features some subplots that sort of go nowhere.  Vince Masuka has a daughter, it turns out, which provides some comic relief, but not much else because it's like the writers realized they only had ten episodes and they also have to deal with the Quinn/Deb/Jamie love triangle and this season's Isaak Sirko played by Charlotte Rampling who previously starred in the greatest movie of all time: Zardoz.

All in all, I think the reason I'm not as angry about this as some other fans is that the show was clearly not what it once was and I'd already sort of lowered my expectations.  There's all kinds of "how it should have ended" posts on the net, and a few people going so far as to suggest a kickstarter to shoot a proper send off to America's favorite serial killer.  Yes, the lumberjack ending was all manner of lame, but I don't know about actually trying to do something about it.  I feel like quoting another great show with an ending that made a lot of people angry, but I felt was a far superior way to end a series:

"What's done is done."

That's right.  I managed to shoehorn LOST into a post about the end of Dexter.  And tell Vogel's son that "Make Your Own Kind of Music" is Desmond Hume's song, so step off.

A Three-Year Engagement

November's just over a month away.  For normies, that means football, leaves changing colors (if you live in a place where they actually do that), and something about Native Americans hosting a dinner for a bunch of people who got kicked out of England for wearing buckles on their hats.  (Seriously, it's not like the buckles were holding anything up.  Stupid pretentious fashionista Pilgrims...)  For myself and thousands of other writers, it means the self-imposed stress of National Novel Writing Month.  If you're not familiar with NaNoWriMo, it's this writing challenge that takes place every November where you write a fifty-thousand page novel in thirty days and behave like some neurotic, OCD novelist while your friends and family shake their heads and call you names behind your back, provided they don't already do that, in which case, you probably won't notice.

There are no real stakes and no real enforcement of the rules, except maybe some decent discounts on writing software and similarly related products, so it's kind of hilarious how stressed out people can get over their NaNoWriMo project.  I imagine people new to the idea raising an eyebrow and asking "What's the point?  What do I get out of this thing?"

After a brisk backhand to the cheek, I imagine Yoda narrowing his eyes whilst stating "Only what you take with you," because I'm a gigantic nerd and should probably get out of my Mom's basement.  I'm joking again; I live in Southern California and nobody has a basement here.  But I digress...

This year will mark three years since my first successful Nano and holy shit, I promised to release the damn thing independently on Kindle, Nook, etc, then become rich and famous like that pervert who wrote 50 Shades of Gray.  I even used GIMP to paint a nifty cover before promptly going all lame and putting it on the back burner.

Yeah, so it's an adventure novel involving radioactive mushrooms and international espionage in an alternate diesel-punk timeline.  I've decided I'm finally going to put this thing out before November because three years is a long ass time to sit on a project that in purely technical terms is only long enough to be a "novella".  I decided that just now as I was writing.  As soon as I finish this blog entry.  Hah, I'm already procrastinating on the editing by not ending this blog because once I end this blog, it means I have to get started...  And I will.  Right.  Now.

8-bit Assault Loadout

Tribute to retro/old-school gaming.  It was weird working on a quad-core processor in Manga Studio 5 at 125 x 125 resolution.

This design is available at RedBubble on shirts and whatnot.

The World's End

And the world was no more.  The apocalypse came and all we know and love was reduced to ash and smoldering ruin...  But I'm not here to discuss the fan reaction to Ben Affleck being cast as Batman, this is a review about Edgar Wright's latest flick (and 3rd in the "Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy") The World's End.  While the Batman announcement generated enough publicity and created a hashmark surplus large enough to shade and texture the Japanese Manga industry for two centuries, Wright, Pegg, Frost, and the rest of the usual suspects put out yet another ridiculously entertaining movie.

Pegg takes on the role Gary King, 12-step Escapee and lead instigator to a group of five formerly hard-drinking, hard-partying British youths, now all grown up with careers and wives, etc. aside for Gary, who remains obsessed with (among other things) completing a 12-pub challenge that he failed so many years ago.  A time when bands like Depeche Mode, The Pixies, Sonic Youth, and Janes Addiction were all the rage.  (Holy crap, just rattling those bands off makes me kind of nostalgic for the early 90's.)

Gary is an annoying alcoholic who still manages to convince his mature friends to reluctantly head back to their hometown and make one final attempt at the epic pub crawl known as "the Golden Mile".  The performance is very good and a nice change from the previous two movies where Frost was the one playing Id to Pegg's more responsible characters.  It's a good thing he can keep your attention and only be borderline too annoying, because the film for about forty minutes has nothing to do with robots or aliens.  I almost feel like I should tag that as a spoiler, because if you came into this movie knowing nothing about it (or Wright and Pegg's film making history together), you'd think this was one of those charming English Comedies like the The Full Monty, Billy Elliot, or when Jeremy Clarkson beat up Piers Morgan.

But yes, a little more than a third into the movie, things get more than a little out of hand as they tend to do in Edgar Wright movies (and real-life pub crawls).  There's an alien invasion, replicants, well-choreographed fight scenes that get more outrageous as the characters build up Super Saiyan levels of Dutch Courage with every pint consumed.  Throughout it all, they actually manage to keep a hold on the human elements, something that sometimes goes missing in the big action "blockbuster" movies when it becomes about how many CG buildings the FX house can annihilate.  There's a strange anti nanny-state message throughout that I didn't expect, but totally dig because with all the government spying stuff in the news nowadays, (Hi NSA, if you're reading this, please click on my Amazon Affiliate links!) a lot of people seem pretty concerned about being free...  To do what they want...  Any old time.

That's impossible, even for a computer!

Back in the early days of the internet, when X-Files fan pages and the *blink* tag roamed the web, I would frequent a number of amateur film sites run by teenagers like myself who were trying to create movies with whatever we had available at the time.   By today's standards, this included technology just a step above the phenakistoscope but not as steampunkishly awesome.  Remember VHS-C?  You're better off if you don't, unless you produce training videos for the Dharma Initiative.  And by "film sites" I mean personal pages on GeoCities, Tripod, Angelfire, and the like that read more like wish lists of the movies we wanted to make someday.  I'm talking old school, basic HTML, on dial-up connections that would be taxed to their limits by a simple blog with a few pictures.  That didn't really matter though because it was 1996, what the hell is a blog, and did you hear about this movie coming out called Independence Day?  Looks awesome.  Bonus points and a meteoric rise in the pecking order would occur if anyone managed to actually go through the somewhat hellish process of capturing their film-videos and (gasp) putting them up for people in the larger world to see.

After around eight years of slogging through with Pentiums, Pentium II's, III's, AMD Athlons, Semprons and Decepticons and the like, I started to realize that when it came to both hardware and software, my old "If it didn't cost so much, I'd be making indie films every month" excuse was growing less and less credible.  I had a miniDV camcorder and my dual core Athlon desktop could edit standard definition video fast by MySpace era standards.  I was at the tail end of film school, soon to have a Bachelor of Fucking Sciences degree in Film and Media Production (BFS Degree.  Look it up fool.).  I was doing a webcomic called Section 3! (Now resurrected maybe, we'll see) using mainly Photoshop 7.  Youtube was about to become a thing.

Then I got a job.  Like an actual job that didn't involve shoveling popcorn or stripping the coating from copper telephone cables (not even joking, the temp-world is a strange place sometimes).  The ultimate excuse for a procrastinating creative type is "growing up".  It was perfect because with HD available to all, tablet computers and a billion ways to get your work in front of people, I felt like one of those college sport stars that turns into a draft bust but whatever, I was getting paid.

But I still want to make movies.  I still want to tell stories, be it through comics, animation, film, or monosyllabic grunts while explaining my latest cave painting.  I decided to get back into it with NaNoWriMo and more recently, a new webcomic called An Arrow in the Moon.  As I did, I suddenly realized that all the stuff I hoped for back in the old days had arrived.  The things that were always "on the horizon" in the early 2000's actually showed up, RIAA and MPAA attempts to disrupt the tech be damned.  Video editing is not expensive anymore and the need to "capture" from sources is essentially gone or a one-step process.  A basic laptop in the sub $700 dollar range can edit HD video without a problem.  You can put your work up on YouTube, Vimeo, or just throw it up as a torrent.

So what's the point of this, the longest blog post I've put up to date here?  It's for me to complain like an old man about how easy you whippersnappers have it these days.  We would have killed for the stuff that exists now back in the day, I'll tell you what.  And even if we did have it back then, we had to walk fifteen miles in the snow to access it. And before that, we had to walk fifteen miles just to get to the snow.  Actually, this post is more of a letter to myself, reminding me that things are possible now.

So I need to get off my ass, you need to get off my lawn, and we need to start creating, because the technology is here, it's relatively cheap, and despite all this, I estimate 80% of the stuff coming out of mainstream media/entertainment is kind of garbage.

Below:  Amazon links to things I use, because they say I get money if I convince people to buy them.  Lacking items like Photoshop, higher-end Wacom stuff, and Some other Adobe products because they're all high-quality, but linking them here goes against my thesis of creativity on the cheap.

• Manga Studio 5: This program is the stuff if you're making comics.  I was kind of skeptical because the non-EX version is under a hundred dollars.  Amazon's got the best price I could find if you're not a current student.  If you are, I think you can go directly to Smith-Micro and get it for $50 bucks.
• Sony Movie Studio Platinum Suite 12: That's quite a mouthful.  Disclaimer:  I actually use an earlier version of this, but unless they completely dropped the ball, this program's got everything you need to edit HD video unless you're trying to get your stuff ready for 35mm theatrical release.  Sound tools are above average.
• SketchBook Pro 6 : Simple and cheap.  Missing some advanced features you'd find in Manga Studio or Photoshop, but great if you just want to draw without a bunch of nonsense everywhere or consider a lot of photo manipulation stuff to be "cheating".
• Monoprice 10X6.25 Inches Graphic Drawing Tablet: The only thing that is a little sketchy (ha! see what i did there?) about this thing is the pen.  It feels a little like it could break on you, but after a year of heavy use, it hasn't.  Also, the drivers are a little strange.  You can find updated ones at UC-Logic, but be warned.  The site is a little ESL.

Game of Thrones isn't back until 2014. You need your epic fantasy fix.

An Arrow in the Moon launches on Tuesday, 08/20/2013.  The intention is for a normal update schedule of Tuesday and Thursday.  It's brightly colored Disneyesque characters in horrible situations.  Maybe not quite George R.R. Martin horrible, but pretty violent.  The opening sequence is a pretty brutal (well, as brutal as my drawing skills are capable of portraying) fight scene, just to make sure people know off the bat that despite my somewhat cartoony style, I'm not shooting for kid's stuff.  Well maybe if your kids were like me and like violent medieval fighting...  But chances are they're not.  You decide, I'm not raising your damn kids, take some responsibility for once.

Sorry, about that.  Come back, I've changed.  Anyway, doing this comic has made me remember how time consuming the whole full-color, draw-ink-color process is, even though I'm doing almost all of the art for this thing on computer.  If I want to even remotely remain on target with this thing, I might be changing the art style after the opening sequence to something more streamlined.

On that note, I think Smith-Micro's Manga Studio 5 is my software of choice now.  I've worked with Autodesk Sketchbook 6 and Art Rage 4 in the past year and this might finally be the full package as far as comic artist software goes.  I'll probably be dedicating my next blog to the annoying journey of frustration that is drawing/painting software.  (I almost tried to install my copy of Photoshop 7, but though better of it.)

Wine and Meteors

The Julian Starfest is one of those local San Diego County events I've been to like three times now, but can't remember how I learned of it's existence.  All my friends who know about it appear to have learned about it from me.  At any rate, it's one of those cool events that doesn't appear to advertise much, but still draws a decent number of people.  I think there's a decent turnout anyway.  We got there as it was getting dark and you mostly hear rather than see the people around you or catch red-tinged glimpses of them (no white lights allowed in the viewing area).

Usually, the organizers do this thing around a new moon so as to take advantage of dark skies and whatnot, but this year was during the weekend of the Perseid Meteor Shower.  This meant we had a lot of dazzling streaks of burning space debris in the sky with the accompanying oohs and ahs from the crowd, and low cursing from me having missed it because I was fiddling with the settings on my camera.  A camera that's probably not ideal for low light astro-photography, but I'm not made of money so it takes all my crazy mad skillz to squeeze halfway decent images from it.

Did I mention this festival takes place on my HOME PLANET?
BEHOLD OUR TWIN MOONS!

Big Dipper above astronomy enthusiasts.

I may or may not have managed to catch a few shooting stars that I only noticed once I reviewed my pictures on a larger screen.  There were some planes and satellites floating about up there, but by trajectory I think I can safely guess that they weren't aircraft, or else there is some massive government cover-up regarding unreported plane crashes.

Left side, Middle, coming off the right side of the tree.  Meteor?

Center of the canopy roof.  Another One?

At about 11-ish, we called it quits and departed from the Menghini Winery (oh yeah, this all goes down on a vineyard up by Volcan Mountain (whoa...  Like Vulcan, because space and shit!), hence the title of this post.)  Holy hell, did I just use a weird parenthetical within a parenthetical?  Thought I was doing javascript for a second there.  Sorry.  Onward.

There were still people watching the meteor shower scattered around the grounds as we left, as evidenced by the fact that I nearly tripped over two of them on the way out and the constant murmur of stargazers in all directions.  There were probably more galactic fireworks to be seen, but there was an hour plus drive before returning to San Diego proper.  

Official Website:  Julian Starfest

Bigger Photoset:  Flickr!

You thought I gave up again, didn't you?

Got the post comic-con, back to work, jacked-up sleep pattern for a while there.  The one where you're ripped back into the normal world where you sit a a cubicle and have to catch up to the stacks of paperwork that built up like squatter villages while you were out having fun.  Depressed and tired from playing catch-up and pushing paper for a week, you can't muster the energy to blog or draw or much of anything creative-wise.  Not familiar with that?  You go to hell.

No seriously, don't go to hell.  I didn't mean it.  Here's some concept art from my now very soon to premier webcomic.  You can check out the page I set up at http://anarrowinthemoon.thecomicseries.com

But don't go there yet.  Unless you're a fan of CSS layouts and no content.

An abandoned fortress at the edge of the Ermynnland

Cearynth Covylli, the Queen of Rivers

The crown worn by the King or Queen of Rivers is a living length of Snake Ivy woven into a circlet with a Star Aquamarine at the front.

CCI 2013 Photo Dump (Did I get you?)

So I took quite a few pictures this past weekend.  If you're in one of these and want a higher-res version, email or message me or something.  I reduced them because it was taking forever to upload.  

If you're not down with the slideshow thing.  Album link can be found HERE.  I think the "View All" button does that too, but I don't know how to internet...

The Forest is Watching

More symbol design for my upcoming webcomic.

Within the ancient forest of the Aermyn, you are never alone.

Con Man

Things I learned at Comic-Con International 2013...

Jennifer Carpenter steals things.  Specifically, she took "a lot of stuff" from the Dexter set after they wrapped shooting for the final episode.  It was insinuated that she even yoinked the blood spatter paintings Michael C. Hall intended to take as souvenirs.  In case you missed it the first time, she reiterated that she took "a lot of stuff".  Also, she wants Deb to die because she does't want her in her head anymore.

"No I'm serious.  I think I might be going to jail..."

Kevin Smith is one of the world's greatest motivational speakers.  Nearly every person who came up to the mic on his Saturday night panel talked about how Lunchbox changed their lives in some profound way.  Not bad for a man whose most famous on screen character is known for being silent.  Snooch to the nooch.

Jim Lee is Stan Lee's son.  The Marvel Comics Legend legally adopted the talented artist after his entire village was mercilessly fire-bombed during the Asian Pacific War of 1973, leaving young Jim as the only survivor.  Thankfully the successful UN program known as "We are One World" connected the two of them and the rest is history.

The previous thing I said regarding the two Lee's is completely untrue.  Every.  Single.  Word.

Something true.  Jim Lee is a smart ass and his panels are highly entertaining, especially when you consider it's just some Korean dude drawing on an overhead projector.  In high school we called that Physics class.

Oh crap, he's lost it...

...Never mind.

Neil Gaiman looks like Snape.  I already knew this, but every time I see him in person, my brain treats it as new information.

American Superheroes are creepy as fuckall when done by a Japanese animation house.  Although I definitely liked the flick, "Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox" took some getting used to in terms of visuals.  Also, it apparently takes the Dread Pirate Roberts (Cary Elwes) voicing the character to make Aquaman bad-ass.

By Saturday night, the tents outside of Hall H smell like the camp of a mongolian raiding party, complete with horses, after riding day and night, unbathed for a week.

Any attempts by security to actively control a crowd of nerds is less effective than stepping back and letting said crowd of nerds regulate itself.

Steampunk is still gaining popularity.  It's only a matter of time before suburban rich kids co-opt the movement into the more mainstream friendly, watered down, Steam Pop-Punk.  I hope not.  Here's some "Chap Hop".  It's fucking weird.  That makes it pretty cool.

Finally, I took like a billion pictures.  Combined with the billions I've taken at comic-cons in the past, that makes for like, several hundred pictures.  Look for full on photographic goodness next time as I continue the SDCCI 2013 post-game..

The Death Star will be in range in 33 hours...

From the east they came...  Long-haired wildmen, some with beards thickest about the neck area, bearing strange long boxes filled with their curious pictographic literature and detailed figurines of legendary heroes.  Curious beings in elaborate garb and finery modeled from animated cinema orginating across the Pacific appeared in droves, some seeking not so much to witness the spectacle forming, so much as become the spectacle.  From the North and East, South, and West...  From all reaches of the globe they descended upon my coastal city like the Dothraki Horde.  Artisans and merchants sold their wares in the grand hall.  With them came the illusionists from the glittering, decadent metropolis to the North, seeking inspiration for their next work or an audience for their latest spectacle.  For 4 days and 4 nights the festival continued and the City on the Coast pulsed with excitement.  At the end of the fourth day, the festival ended and the curious visitors departed, some to far off lands, some to their normal lives within the city itself.  As the doors to the grand hall closed, some already began counting the days until the next year, when it would all begin again.

I've always been a fantasy writer at heart.

Comic Con is here again.  Pictures are coming...  If it hadn't been for villainy, this would be my 15th comic-con in a row, but circa 2000 or 2001 some foolish manager decided I didn't need the day off.  I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.  Of course not.  That would be awful.  I hate liver.  It tastes like its been used to filter blood toxins or something.

Pacific Rim

First off, today I learned that Jaegermeister means "Master Hunter".  Actually, I knew a Meister was a master of something, but in the opening seconds of Pacific Rim, they define "Jaeger" as meaning "Hunter".  It connected the dots for me.  That has nothing to do with this movie review post.

Secondly, Pacific Rim is easily the most enjoyable thing I've seen on screen this summer. It might have something to do with being an 80's/90's kid who grew up watching Voltron, Robotech and the like, but judging from the reactions of the younger set in the theater, they were having a damn good a time watching giant robots throw down with giant inter-dimensional alien beasts for 2+ hours too.  I suppose when all you've had in this genre the past few years was seen via a shaky, indestructible camcorder or involved Shia Labeouf saying "no" a lot, this was quite the treat.

The plot, if for some reason you were concerned with such things, is that monstrous Kaiju are coming to earth via a rift in the pacific ocean, wreaking havoc on mankind, and being total dicks to everyone they can get their semi-truck size claws on.  They're each about the size of skyscraper and are really pissed off all the time.  Humanity's (awesome) response to this threat is to build equally monstrous robots called Jaegers operated by two pilots who act as left and right brain lobes within the mechanical behemoth's skull.

It's pretty much a given that anything directed by Guillermo Del Toro will have a vast array of cool beasts and characters to look at, and he doesn't hold back here.  In the blue corner, the Jaegers have cool names like "Gipsy Danger", "Cherno-Alpha", and "Striker Eureka", while their opponents in the red corner bear names like "Knife Head", "Trespasser" and "Leatherback".  The level of detail and care put into designing these things, like everything else in the movie, is top notch, and they managed to give them individual identity without resorting to racist automobiles (I'm going to lay off the Transformers franchise now).

I saw the movie in IMAX 3D, which was worth the extra couple of bucks, even though it literally puts money in George Lucas's already fat wallet and I can see some people feeling a little bit like the early Jaeger pilots in some spots.  Seriously, my eyes were watering from the insane level of stuff flying around during the battle scenes.  There might have been blood coming out of my eyes.  It was pretty rad.  I theorize Del Toro wanted to make the audience get the full experience of being inside a massive robot that's linked to your brain and the brain of your co-pilot while a twenty-five-story Komodo Dragon is bitch slapping you with its tail.

In short.  This was just all out fun.  Strap in and cast off the chains of moody, introspective superheroes for a little while. Keep an eye out for homages to previous giant monster/robot films like Godzilla (and I swear the quick arm motions in one scene were straight out of Power Rangers).  Speaking of which, I've heard there's an upcoming Godzilla movie...  We'll see.

Molorhan Swordbill

This is the emblem of the Molorhan Army.  Never heard of the Molorhan Army?  That's because the webcomic which features them, (written and drawn by myself) hasn't started it's run yet.

Here I go again on my own...

So yeah, this is a thing for me again.  I say "again" as if there were any readers left after I abandoned my last blog at Ben vs. Reality.  But now I'm older and/or wiser.  Even nerdier.  Is that possible?  Yes.

This time's gonna be different, I tell ya.  Regular updates and everything.  I know I've said that before, but this time I mean it homie.