So we now know who won strip search. Just to go a run down of my thoughts:

• I like Maki’s work however his joke’s don’t tend to do much for me. His art is cool. Just not my favorite comic strip creator of the three. 
• Abby’s art is nice and simple but it’s always been her jokes that draw me in. Her one-off -gag strips are really good and if I ever need to read comic strips I enjoy her website is always a good place to go. With this said, her story or arc based strips don’t do much for me. At least the ones she presented weren’t as good as I know she can do writing-wise. As much as I wanted her to win, I see why the decision was made.
• Katy’s strips are fun. She noted at the start how she works at Nickelodeon and I can totally see those roots planted in both art and writing which is not a bad thing. I think it works to her advantage. Her characters and the story she came up with were definitly engageing, I want to see more of those characters and read more stories and I’m sure I’ll enjoy it. Read her comic CAMP WEEDONWANTCHA.

I like the choice, I think it’s a great opportunity for her. Strip search was great and I’ll be sure to keep an eye out for a DVD which I think would be neat to have.

Watch Strip Search Here.

Penny Arcade’s Strip Search has been a really enjoyable and interesting roller coaster ride. I feel like it’s hard to know who you should go for. We had Katie go up for elimination twice and beat it both times so for the start it was all ‘Katie is such a tank, how are the other artists going to beat her?’ and she is still going strong. Lexxy was eliminated and brought back so she was also seen for a bit as the person that might be hard to beat although unfortunately she did not survive another elimination challenge. I guess when it comes down to it you should go for you favorite, right? So while all the artists had their pros and their cons, I have to pick Abby for the one I hope to win.

Abby’s art may be simpler than a lot of the other competitor’s and from the start you don’t think much of Abby. Her confidence levels were low and I wasn’t sure she was going to survive one elimination challenge. I could not have been more wrong. One 90 minute elimination challenge around Mike & Jerry and her confidence(and sass) level got so much higher and she was funnier than before. Her interactions with Mike are some of my favorites, next to Monica’s interactions with Mike . So I went to check out her website and her webcomic and ended up really enjoying her work and her style of humor. I think she is a great comic strip creator and she’s only going to get better.

Abby’s idea for scheduling the comic presented in the finale was great. I have seen a lot of different ideas for scheduling a strip and there are so many things to consider. A lot of webcomics vary in their update schedules, anywhere from 1-7 days a week, a lot of the ones I read being either 3 or 5 days a week. The idea is that if you don’t update often enough, say 1 day a week, people could for whatever reason not catch the comic that week. That might be if the updates aren’t engaging enough or interesting enough or funny enough to warrant them remembering or people need more story in a week than just what they are getting in the 1 day a week update or people may just forget to check your site once a week. Whatever the reason, I have always figured that 1 day a week comics would suffer a little more or be harder to do than a 3, 5 or 7 day a week strip. 1 strip a week is do-able and can build an audience but I feel like it wouldn’t be as much as if the strip updated more in a week.

Abby’s idea is not to post one comic a week but rather one scene a week. That is one update a week but consisting of a handful of strips giving people a good chunk of story in one sitting. Sure she could easily spread that handful of strips consisting of that  one ‘scene’ of her comic over the course of the week in a 3-5 day schedule but I feel like this way it could be easier to read a scene of the story in one sitting than come back 3-5 times that week and read it.

The first part of the finale was really cool. It was interesting to see what the artists came up with in that 2 month break where they needed to come up with 6 comics, 3 characters and 1 t-shirt design. The artists have now been given 4 hours to create a 3 strip arc based around the topics chosen from the waste basked of broken dreams which were creation, good & evil and morality. Not only does Katie decide not to use the re-draw ticket(which would allow her to re-draw an idea from the basket) she also decides with 2 hours left to put aside the Cintiq and use paper to draw her strip. Next Tuesday brings us part 2 of the finale and I am still hoping Abby wins. I think that could be really cool for her.

You can watch the first part of the Strip Search finale here.

Now there have been many suggestions for the next Doctor, some jokes, some great suggestions. I’ve seen Morgan Freeman all the way to ‘lets just have The Doctor regenerate back into David Tennant’ put out there as to who should be the next Doctor. The ones I thought were interesting ideas were:

1. Richard Ayoade from the I.T. Crowd. Serious suggestion or not he has the funny, wacky and dorky qualities that Smith(which like I said was one of Smith’s better qualities) so I say bring it on. 
2. David Morrissey from the 2008 special The Next Doctor would make a great Doctor. Though his work on The Walking Dead is probably his priority right now.
3. Benedict Cumberbatch from Sherlock & Star Trek Into Darkness. Great actor and he can do the serious side well. He already works with Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat on Sherlock and I think he could do an interesting job.

Those are just a few I thought were cool ideas but there have been so many good suggestions as well.

The explanation for Clara was something I wasn’t expecting and was much better than some ‘oh yeah she’s a time lord or something similar’ kind of reason. This episode  along with this season, revisited a lot of old ‘Who’ moments. It was interesting that this River Song was post-library and how she interacted with the characters.

In this episode, The Great Intelligence  which has been seen once or twice before this season, sought to go back through the Doctor’s time stream and make all his victories into losses. This resulted in all the people and planets he saved being lost. A world without The Doctor was explored also in the episode Turn Left from season 4 and I’ve always liked this idea being explored.

To address the end of the episode. Introducing John Hurt as The Doctor. So the main theory that I have seen is that this is the Doctor between McGann and Eccleston and that the upcoming special could potentially fill a few gaps about the time war and how The Doctor regenerated etc. I’m all for that and I think it could make for an interesting story. All I know is I need to find a TARDIS, get in it and zip off to the 23rd(I think) of November and watch this special because it is looking so cool.

How I Met Your Mother Season 9 was announced that the 24 episode season would be set over one weekend presumably about how Ted met and got to know the mother. Now I haven’t yet seen that Season 8 finale, however it was spoiled for me before I even knew the episode was out. Good job internet. The idea of 24 episodes over one weekend has been compared to a lot to shows like 24 where they have a season spread over 24 hours. Now I haven’t seen 24 but one could assume the idea works if that show managed to get 9 seasons out. I for one am interested to watch the new season and see how it plays out.

The first full trailer for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D came out this week. I’m hoping that the show would be connected to the movies in the way that we get to seen heroes from the films in the show or heroes for the films could even be introduced in the show(such as maybe Daredevil or The Punisher, two of which I believe Marvel got the rights of back). People are also guessing that Angel’s J. August Richards’ character from the trailer could be Luke Cage which would be cool. That said I like the idea of a show where it’s mainly just the missions the agents go on without Captain America bailing them out. I expect we will have to wait at least to the end of the first season to see why Coulson is still around.

This isn’t your Jon Favreau Iron Man. The first two films for me were fun adventures introducing and exploring the Iron Man and the whole shrapnel in Tony’s body thing. The second film, as fun as it was, also didn’t manage to capture the elements that everyone loved about the first film.

Iron Man 3, this time Directed and Written by Shane Black(Lethal Weapon), was a thrill-ride with intense action scenes and unexpected turns. This time around Tony is dealing with life after the events of The Avengers which involved Aliens, Gods, Monsters and a near death experience. He’s figuring out what kind of man he is going to be.

Robert Downey Jr. was great as always as Tony Stark and I enjoyed Don Cheadle’s Rhodey  and what he brought to the film although I did feel that the Iron Patriot armor was good and I see why they put it in, though we could have done without it. There were a number of cool cameos from  Shaun Toub who played Yinsen from the first film, Mark Ruffalo who played Bruce Banner in The Avengers and Stan Lee who played a pageant judge giving a girl 10/10.

The story was well adapted from Warren Ellis’ Extremis story in the comic books with some slight variations and one big variation in who the main antagonist of the story was and I felt that was a good decision. There were rumors of Pepper taking the form of her comic book alter-ego Rescue and I have to say I was really hoping for it. I liked the whole Pepper becoming an armored hero just like Tony and Rhodey and I figured if the film could have Iron Patriot it could have had Rescue. Sadly, no luck there. Hopefully a possible feature for that story in a future installment.

The one thing I guess that bugged me about the film is, and I think Maya Hansen in the book said this best, “Can’t The Avengers or someone deal with him?”. Seriously though, whether or not Tony called up Fury or someone and asked for help, surely S.H.I.E.L.D saw this guy blowing stuff up, especially the home of their Armored Avenger, and figured they should help. This was the one thing I was hoping they would address. Alas, no dice. Well at least we found out what that giant bunny was from the trailers.

The big action scenes were pretty cool, especially the 42 odd armored facing against the Extremis-powered henchmen. Tony going from suit to suit and suit 42 featured throughout the film being too broken to work had it’s humorous aspects.

To address the big twist of the film, this is what I was talking about when I said the film had unexpected turns. I was so hoping for a big Iron Man vs. Mandarin battle. I was also hoping for The Ten Rings to be more than a name. That said I loved the twist. They play the Mandarin to be the biggest threat yet. This unstoppable force that even his own henchmen are scared of and the guy that took down Iron Man. The twist of the film I would say catches you so off guard that it just makes you say “wait what? ohhh. Dang. Well done, filmmakers.”

The post-credits scene wasn’t a teaser. Instead it was a humorous bit at the end of the film with the same feel of the shawarma scene at the end of Th Avengers. Although I do feel it would have been better tagged at the end of the film before the credits for the people that leave the theater before the credits end. But that’s just me.

Lastly, if you enjoyed Iron Man 3 I strongly recommend reading the Iron Man book Extremis. The story of the film was, as I said, adapted form this great story by Warren Ellis and the art by Adi Granov to me feels simple but in a good way, his art has a great style about it and in some scenes looked amazing to be.

More photos of Jamie Foxx’s Electro popped up in my feed tonight and I will say that some photos look kind of weird without the effects and CGI that will be used but my initial thought was that it reminded me of an Eiffel 65 song.

Jamie Foxx as Electro

Doctor Who Season 7.5 So Far

I was always a little iffy about Matt Smith’s run of Doctor Who. Season 5 had it’s moments. I remember really enjoying the episode ‘The Lodger’ and ‘Vincent and the Doctor’ was really well done especially the ending. Season 6 was good although normally with Doctor Who we have a theme underlying most episodes in a Season that get explained/resolved in the final few episodes such as seeing cracks everywhere they go or the constant mentioning of the mysterious Harold Saxon in season 3. Season 6 had instead a story that started with the first 2 episodes and was concluded in the last 2 or so episodes and in between focused a lot on River Song. I guess I was just more used to a story being more underlying in an Season until the end and not overarching a season so while season 6 was good, that was one thing that bugged me about it.

Actually talking about season 7.5, we are just starting to get to know Jenna’s character Clara and see her interact not only with The Doctor but also with the TARDIS. She’s been great so far and I really want to know what the secret is behind her character  Say what you want but Moffat sure knows how to create mystery behind a character. Matt Smith has been great. His Doctor showed real passion in ‘The Rings of Akhaten’ talking about what he’s seen and what he’s lost. The most recent episode at the time of this post, the episode ‘Hide’, started off with Clara introducing herself and The Doctor and Ghostbusters, showed great development between Clara and The Doctor and at one point showed The Doctor trapped, scared and not knowing what to do which was done well.

So far, for me at least, these season 7 standalone episodes have all been really enjoyable for the most part with the pros out weighing the cons and I can’t wait to see where it goes next.

David Tennant & Matt Smith

Pictures of Jamie Foxx’s Amazing Spider-man 2 Electro have surfaced and they look pretty cool. The character will of course look cooler with effects and all but getting the general idea of what he’ll look like, I like it. For me Ultimate Spider-man was one of my first comic book series I read, it was my introduction to modern Spidey I loved Bendis’ take on the character and got Bendis to sign my volume 1 of the series. To me those people that are all about the Ultimate series would like this version more because this blue/yellow electricity covered Electro is the one the Ultimate fans were exposed to first. I like this version because this pure blue Electro was, among other crazy things, one of young Miles Morales’ first villain fight as Spider-man which I think is cool. These pictures can be viewed here.

A new Kick-Ass 2 clip came out and can be viewed here. This clip teases the eventual battle between Kick-Ass’ superhero team and the bad guy team led by Christopher Mintz-Plasse’s character. They took most of the great cast from the first film and added names like Jim Carrey and Donald Faison. Clarke Duke, who is always a great comedy actor, I’m hoping has a bigger role as his character(Marty) did in the book version of the film as well. I am interested to see how well this film adapts the comic story and of course my brain will be comparing to the first one.

There’s been other cool stuff come out recently. The third Man of Steel trailer looks pretty cool. Looks like we may see elements of pre-Superman Clark which I am hoping doesn’t take too much time of the film doing an origin story where he realizes the help or hope he can provide to the human race mainly because we did just have a 10 season series detailing all of that. The action looks cool and Amy Adams is good in most things I have seen her in so I’m looking forward to her version of Lois Lane as well.

Lastly, Iron Man 3 comes out in like a week and from what I can tell you can expect a cool character exploration as well as, I’m hoping, an epic fight involving however many armors it was. I am also looking forward to seeing how the Extremis story is incorporated into this film which seems to be a main theme through out the trailers.

The first episode of Doctor Who series 7.5 started up introducing Clara Oswald, the new companion. It was a good story, better than the last Christmas special(also introducing the new companion) and did what Moffat does best. Made it’s viewers paranoid about something else in the world. This time it was Wi-Fi. Now while I like Clara, I can’t help but look at this companion that The Doctor met as a child and has some mystery surrounding her story that will probably be explored over a season or 2(the question ‘Why does this girl keep coming back like Kenny from South Park?’). Now I’m all for it, but it does feel like we just got done fare-welling a girl who The Doctor met as a kid(Fish Fingers & Custard, anyone?) and had some mystery surrounding her connecting her to this semi-time lord chick that turned out to be her best friend/daughter but is all grown up and hanging out with them. Anyway, they do have me curious about Clara and I am keen to see where the story goes from here.

Game of Thrones Season 3 Started Up

A good start to the season, a few ‘wait, who’s that guy again?’ moments and the hopes that things get better for our dear Tyrion. Not a huge fan of the Stannis storyline but that may be because we have had him for a season less than most of the other characters we were already invested in.

Walking Dead Season 3 Ended

and I have not watched it yet. I will soon and thoughts to come.

I Read Comics

I started reading Jonathan Hickman’s Fantastic Four and I may say that his first storyline ‘Solve Everything’ is a great story focusing on Reed Richards, his desire to solve all the world’s problems and his realization that friends and family are more important. It was a great story with a  nice ending.

On a more recent note, Superior Spider-man is still good, I assumed issue #6 wouldn’t be so good, I was never a fan of the villain Screwball, someone that makes a name videoing her humiliating people, but it was a good issue and I am keen to see where The Avengers go with this new Spider-man.

Issue #31 of Cullen Bunn’s Venom is a great jumping on point taking Flash Thompson to Philadelphia to be a superhero there with new supporting characters that have good potential and an interesting ending. Definitely something I will look out for in the future.

Not too long ago Marvel Comics teased something upcoming with an image that just read ‘First’ with names of various creators in the shape of the number 1. It was then announced that Marvel Comics would be making 700 of their issue #1′s free on the digital comics service Comixology.

Since the deal was put in place, Comixology’s server had issues from all the traffic and this resulted in their website and mobile applications being unusable for the last couple of days. This meant that not only was the deal put on a hold, but people who wanted to read comics they previously purchased had to wait as well. This sort of thing has happened before, an example e that comes to mind is last year’s Click Frenzy. Lots of stores doing online sales for one night only resulting in some stores websites, and even the Click Frenzy website itself being down for some time.

Comixology may not be a totally new service, however it’s abilities and possibilities are new and can always be stretched in different ways. Last year on Free Comic Book Day I talked about how if anyone wants to try a free comic to get into comics, not necessarily on FCBD, then it has gotten easier to find one that looks appealing and download it fairly quickly. Instead of going down to the comic shop people have the option to actually select, retrieve and read a comic without even getting off their seat.

If you buy a recent Marvel comic in print you have the option to use a code to get a digital copy which allows you to read the comic on your tablet or even your telephone of all things.  One of the compliments I most hear about Comixology’s services is the ‘Guided View’ technology which allows easy to navigate panel-by-panel reading(which is great for smart phones). Marvel and DC have been taking advantage of this with their Infinite and Digital First comics specifically designed to take advantage of this new way of reading. Marvel’s Ultimate Spider-man Infinite comic looks almost like an animation.

Point being, and this is basically what was going through my head as this was going on, is that digital comics distribution services such as Comixology will always be coming up with new methods, platforms and ways to read, distribute and advertise comic books and graphic novels. I feel like when testing the waters for what works, especially with high volume sales/deals like this, there will always be something that may not work the way we want and kinks to work out of the system and that’s just how we learn and fix stuff.

The Comixology Facebook and Twitter pages were doing a good job of helping confused customers and assuring people they would be back online in no time. They were also getting a few helpful suggestions to do with being able to read the comics should something like this happen again, etc. Part of me does hope the Comixology team does take note of some of the helpful suggestions that were there(and ignore the less helpful ones) and maybe integrate some of them in the future.

 Comixology’s team in general did a great job over the past few days, I know website downtime for anyone can’t be an easy thing to go through and I do hope they are able to get through the last of the dust with ease.