Laser Wachhunde

Und wieder ist eine Woche vorbeigeschossen.

Wohnung besichtigt. Tolle Lage, stilvoll und groß. Die damit verbundenen Schulden schrecken ab und eine gewisse Angst setzt beim Gedanken ein, sich derartig langfristig zu binden. Die Ermutigung meiner Freunde und Familie hilft jedoch dabei, über meinen eigenen Schatten zu springen. Die Bank ist ebenfalls an Bord. Ein neuer Lebensabschnitt kann also mit ein wenig Glück beginnen.

Größter Erfolg der Woche: Vortrag vor zwei Schulklassen über den Wechsel im Superhelden-Comic seit seiner Entstehung vor 75 Jahren gehalten. Auf Anregung einer Kollegin hin das Thema mit Nietzsches Übermenschgedanken verbunden, um die existentialistischen Probleme von Superhelden zu ergründen. Alleine bei Alan Moores Watchmen lässt sich hier einiges finden. Die heutige Gesellschaft würde die Helden von damals wohl nicht mehr akzeptieren und bevorzugt Figuren mit Fehlern und Selbstzweifeln. Vortrag war Teil eines kleinen Comicfestivals eines Gymnasiums. Zum ersten Mal als Comicforscher ernst genommen worden.

Watch_Dogs angespielt. Gelungener Zeitvertreib, dessen vernetzte Welt ein beängstigendes Bild einer möglichen Zukunft zeichnet. Auf Knopfdruck sind alle Informationen über jeden Menschen erhältlich. Wahrscheinlich nicht mal mehr Zukunftsvision.

Mit Dude und seinen Kumpels zum Lasertag. Nervenkitzel und jede Menge Spaß. Jedoch gemerkt, dass die körperliche Form zu wünschen übrig lässt.

Dennoch bleibt als Fazit eine sehr gute Woche.

Sorry to interrupt

I’m terribly sorry to interrupt our story at this point, especially since the last few submissions are coming up, but I am so swamped at the moment that I hardly find time to write and if I do I prefer to contribute to my newest site, Comic(s) Relief. I promise however to upload the final part of the story this week, probably on Friday.

After that I will move this site over to wordpress.com , as I miss a lot of user statistics and other goodies here on blogspot. This site will remain open, but I will repost the vampire story on the space. I’ll keep you posted on the changes and hope you enjoyed the ride with me so far and will accompany me to this blogs new home, when the time comes.

Metal Gear the story so far…

As promised I will provide the means to brush up on your Metal Gear knowledge on the internet and in any other ways I can think of. First off all, those who are not aware of this yet: Konami has released a standalone encyclopedia on the PSN store that includes all the information on the past titles and everything on the newest game. Still I would like to give you some links and possibilities to revisit the waste story of Solid Snake’s past. I will post them in chronological order (story wise).

Metal Gear Solid 3 – Snake Eater:

The limited edition of the Subsistence release of the game included a third DVD that had the cut scenes, some codec messages and the boss fights cut into a 3 hour movie.

The youtube user alexfung23 has added an extremely large collection of Metal Gear Walkthrough videos that include the whole game and are interesting if you want to see EVERYTHING that happened to Naked Snake. I created a playlist of MGS3: here.

Metal Gear Solid – Portable Ops:

There is sadly no video that I know of on the internet and no comic/novel depicting the events of this game.

Metal Gear 1+2 (MSX):

Here is another playlist created with the videos of alexfung23.

Metal Gear Solid:

Now this is the title you will probably find most ways to recap. First of all you can view the cutscenes and the codec messages when you have finished the remake Twin Snakes. Then there is the possibility to relive the events of Shadow Moses through the comic by Ashley Wood and Kris Oprisko, which was such a success that it was even released in a digital version for the PSP called Metal Gear Solid Digital Graphic Novel. This digital comic includes music and sound effects. It will be released with voiceovers on DVD once the second part including the digital comic of Sons of Liberty will hit the shelves.

The most recent addition to the Metal Gear Solid franchise is a novelization of the game by Raymond Benson.

And for all of you who still have not enough here is the playlist of Phoenix9215987’s videos.

Metal Gear Solid 2 – Sons of Liberty

MGS2 was also treated to a comic book again with the artwork of Ashley Wood and story adaptation by Alex Garner. The digital version has not yet been released but will probably include complete voiceovers by the cast of the game series.

Here is the final video playlist of alexfung23.

This is it. Several hours, if not days, worth of material for all of you who cannot get enough of the world that Hideo Kojima created over 20 years ago. I’m tempted to write a review on the newest title, but I’d also like to shift my attention to something else. So who knows…

Don’t go berserk now!

Last week I told you about a few comics that are based on popular tv shows. This week I chose a manga, actually my favorite manga Kentaro Miura’s Berserk, to give you a small introduction into this Japanese art form. In Japan the manga has a much higher significance than comics have in our culture. They are read by every age and social group and are extremely popular. A broad range of topics are covered reigning from action to comic to romance and many more. Thus it does not have the “nerdy” image that western comic books have and plays a big role in Japanese culture.

Berserk tells the story of the fighter Guts, who as a baby is found by a mercenary gang, brought up by them and trained in the art of the sword. The mercenary group is however not composed by the most moral beings and Guts is treated like a slave and at the age of 9 he is even molested by his godfather. Ultimately he kills the leader of the gang in an attempt to defend himself and has to leave them. He travels from battle to battle. His fighting is so impressive that he is noticed by Griffith, the leader of the Hawks (a very strong mercenary group), and after a confrontation with him, Guts is proposed to join them. Here he finds friends for the first time in his life and faces atrocious battles and incredible evil with them. Later on the world seems to go crazy and everything that Guts believes in falls apart. His love interest for Casca (one of the female mercenaries) and his close friendship to Griffith clash and end in a “monstrous” tragedy.

I don’t want to spoil the read by telling you what exactly happened between Guts and Griffith. In 1997, the studio Oriental Light and Magic released a 25 episode anime of the series, which roughly covers the first 13 books. As of November 2007, 32 volumes of the manga have been released.

For those of you who have been intrigued, let me just put up a small warning sign: Berserk is not for the faint of heart. The Manga and the Anime are both graphically explicit and contain extreme violence, gore and sexual material. Still the storyline of the series is by far one of the best I have ever read.

The images used in this post are all courtesy of Berserk Chronicles

Web comics

As you might have realized up to this point I am into all kinds of geeky stuff and as such I’m also a comic fan. Most of you probably know Superman, Batman, Spider-man and the rest of the DC – Marvel universe. Nowadays comics are not exclusively released in traditional comic books anymore but you can read a lot of them on the internet by now.
Of course you have your traditional web-comics like Penny Arcade, HijiNKS ENSUE, Ctral+Alt+Del or Reallife comics but in the last few years a lot of Tv shows started to publish tie-ins on the web.

The popular scifi-drama Heroes is publishing small web-comics to show you different perspectives of their show. It is also used to keep the fans interested during the summer break. The stories are intense and the artwork is also exceptional and have been such a success that they are now released as paperback comic books.

All of Joss Whedon‘s shows (Buffy the vampire slayer, Angel and Firefly) are currently continued in comic book form. Buffy’s season 8 has already developed over several magazines and it’s a great way for the fans to find out what happened to the gang from Sunnydale after the impressive series finale in 2003.

The popular CW show Supernatural has also released several comic books that tell the story of the two protagonists’ childhood.

Webcomic list