Busybody

GYAAH!!!

Sorry if I've been remiss in updating the ol' blog lately. Work at The Salt Mines has been particularly hellish in the last couple of weeks. We've had to pull double duty twice as often and I've been hopping here and there like a headless kangaroo. Anyway, suffice to say that if I just get through this week in one piece, I'll be darn happy. Heh.

So I'll just go the E-mail Digest route and sum up odds and ends that have been happening recently...

Andrew Drilon just released two ashcans in Comic Quest recently, The Germinator and Subwhere. Check out the offbeat art and storytelling from this young upstart in the comic bin at Vin's. Still on Buddha Boy and the Big Little Boy- Vin and Andrew are going on the air at Monster Radio RX 93.1 tonight at 9pm to talk about- what else- comics. And other stuff, I imagine...

Got a new anime-themed fighter for the PS2. Inu Yasha Ougi Ranbu is a 3-d fighting game with shades of the classic Power Stone. Choose one or two from the popular cast of anime characters and fight it out in single or two-character team combat in various stages. The graphics and sounds are true to the anime, though the fighting is a bit on the shallow side. Still, Inu Yasha fans should grab this one up for the sheer pleasure of kicking Naraku's poisonous butt.

Livewires 5 just hit shelves at CQ and as I expected, the characters are dropping faster than flies in a gas chamber. I can only hope that a hunch that I have- that one character in particular will survive at story's end- proves to be true. Stilll, the art's still great and the story interesting enough for me to read it to the bitter end.

On another front, Frank Cho's Shanna the She-Devil still delivers in terms of art... DAMN Shanna is one sexy babe... but the story's pretty blah and it's all just one long, slightly boring trek and I find myself not caring whether or not Shanna nad the Doc get back in time to save their faceless friends. All I want is... MORE scenes with Shanna doing stuff. Any stuff. Anyway, with just two issues left, I am not looking for a big plot twists to suddenly pop up. I just wanna see more skin before this is over. Then let's have the regular Shanna series announced, please?

Ben Dunn's back in the saddle of his flagship Ninja High School series, and I just have to get back into it. I can't explain it... the guy's storytelling is often off and he uses religious figures too blatantly and his art isn't that great... but I just have to watch how he does things. Perhaps I see something of myself in him. Perhaps I wish I had as great an audience as him. Or maybe it's just that he's always stuck to his guns, done things his own way, no matter what. Or maybe it's just that I just can't resist a ninja title. Oh well.

Been watching more Basilisk and it's still as brutal as ever, with the body count of super-powered ninja growing with each episode. Will the Kouga or Iga come out on top? This series just may keep us all guessing up to the last episode.

Bah. Back to work. Gotta finish this all so's I can get even a bit of sleep tonight. Whatever.