My mother recently came out to visit me and, as usual, she brought a truckload of stuff for me. A big part of that most recent junk drop-off consisted of my dad’s old collection of records…most of which consisted of songs he performed on as either the lead guitar or as lead singer.

While it was great to get the old albums, I haven’t had a way to play a vinyl record in around 20 years now. I grew up on tapes and CDs more than record albums, and now all of my music exists solely on my iPod. Needless to say, I was left in a bit of a bind because I had never heard many of my dad’s performances.

Lucky for me, after a quick search online, I came across a truly marvelous piece of nerd gadgetry: the Audio Technica AT-LP2DUSB LP-to-Digital Recording System with USB. After reading the product description for the Audio-Technica USB Turntable on Amazon.com, I became very excited. You see, not only would it allow me to listen to my new old records, but it was also enable me to transfer that music from vinyl record to MP3 or WAV format. That’s right, I would be able to convert all my vinyl records to digital format. And, even better, it sounded like the process would be a piece of cake.

Which is awesome because I do love me some cake. Read More »

This week was a pretty big week…well, at least in terms of charges to my credit card.  My total bill come out pretty close to $40 and, strangely enough, didn’t include any trades or graphic novels at all.  An unusal thing for sure because I almost always find some sort of higher priced book to pick up. 

1. Secret Invasion #2
2. Mighty Avengers #13
3. Conan #50
4. Rann-Thanagar Holy War #1
5. Avengers-Invaders #1
6. War That Time Forgot #1
7. American Dream #1

With that out of the way, let’s get on to the comic reviews!

At the top of my list and soon at the bottom of my trashcan, Secret Invasion #2 by Brian Michael Bendis and Lenil Francis Yu.  Lenil’s artwork on the series continues to be flat, uneven and very awkward.  I’m not sure what Marvel was thinking by hiring him to draw a book where multiple versions of characters are appearing in and out of costume because everyone he draws looks the same.  It doesn’t help that Yu isn’t the strongest storyteller around as the book quickly becomes very confusing — I’d go so far as to call it unreadable. 

Speaking of storytelling, have I warmed up to the series after 2 issues?  Not at all.  The crossover “event” seems to be nothing more than Marvel attempting to fix a lot of its character and continuity mistakes and missteps over the past 10 years.  Truthfully, they’re forgetting about their biggest mistake of all…putting Joe Quesada in charge as editor-in-chief.  Of course, allowing Bendis to come on board as a writer is a very close second.  Hopefully we’ll eventually find out everyone is a skrull and pretend none of it ever happened.

Secret Invasion has replaced Secret Wars 2 as my nominee for worst company crossover of all time.  It’s nice to see Marvel finally answering the question of how badly one company can fuck itself up. Read More »

Iron Man
Directed by: Jon Favreau
Screenplay by: Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway
Created by: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Terrance Howard, Jeff Bridges, Gwyneth Paltrow, Leslie Bibb, Faran Tahir, Shaun Tobb, Clark Gregg, John Favreau, Samuel L. Jackson and Stan Lee
Running Time: 126 minutes
Rated: PG-13
Release Date: 2008

On May 2, 2008, Iron Man premiered here in the US and went on to pull in over $200 million worldwide.  As a lifelong comic book geek who just happens to have every issue of Iron Man through the mid 1990s (starting with Tales From Suspense #39 from back in March 1963), I must admit that I have been dreading the release of this film since I first heard about it a few years ago.

While I am a big fan of both Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr., everything I saw or heard about this flick screamed “pure cheese” to me for some reason.  Every still I saw or report I read gave me horrible flashbacks to earlier crappy Marvel movies like Daredevil, Electra, the Punisher and that God-awful Generation X made-for-TV flick from the mid-90s.  I had resigned myself to yet another horrible comic book film with my only hope being that, maybe, somehow, it might not be as bad as Catwoman.

After standing in a long opening day line and being forced to sit in a crowded theater, I have to say I have never been more glad to be proven wrong in my entire life.

Read More »

In honor of the Iron Man movie released this past weekend, I would like to dedicate this episode of Game On to the best comic book video games of all time.  Unfortunately, the new Iron Man game will not be on the list.  My quick review of the game is: they did a great job with the look and controls of Iron Man himself, but the game itself didn’t seem to be as well developed.  The environments and enemies were a bit of a let down and, after a few hours of playing, I really wish they had paid Robert Downey Jr to record a few more one-liners because the limited number they had in the game got old real fast. 

That being said, it might be worth a rental from Gamefly if you enjoyed the movie like I did (more on that tomorrow).

Here were go with the Nifty Nerd’s Top 10 Comic Book Video Games of All Time:

10.  Punisher - Capcom (1993):  Easily one of the coolest arcade side-scrollers produced by Capcom, the Punisher was built around game play similar to that of the Final Fight series and Capcom’s other comic book arcade release at the time, Cadillacs & Dinosaurs.  In this arcade gem, you were able to play either the Punisher or a cigar-smoking Nick Fury as you fought your way through six levels of mayhem and destruction.  Wielding guns, knives, swords, bats and grenades, you encountered faces familiar from the pages of Marvel Comics, including Bushwacker, Bone Breaker and the Kingpin…oh, and don’t forget a whole gaggle of canon-fodder goons, thugs and ninjas. 

The Punisher arcade game was great fun to play and was loaded with some truly spiffy comic book style cut scenes.  Now, there was a port of the game to Sega’s Genesis/MegaDrive console, but it really wasn’t the same due to some silly censorship.  If you can find one of the old arcade cabinets for sale online, or have an X-Arcade Mame Cabinet, Capcom’s Punisher game is a ton of fun. Read More »