Category: Stream of Consciousness

I'm the darkness, you're the starlight, and I'm burnin' up in here

2013-07-09, 8:12 pm
Categories: Games, Music, Stream of Consciousness, Tech

So here's what I've been listening to:

That's Balance and Ruin, a 5-disc collection of Final Fantasy 6 cover songs from OCRemix.

Now, I think it's still fair to say that Final Fantasy 6 is one of my two favorite games, though I suppose it probably needs an asterisk at this point.

Digression: While FF6 is a great game, it hasn't aged as well as some of its 16-bit contemporaries. Super Mario World, Mega Man X, and Super Metroid, for example, still stand as the pinnacles of their respective series and respective niches of the side-scrolling platformer genre; they're as close to perfection as a game's ever gotten, and, as years of remakes, sequels, and knockoffs have shown, are pretty damn difficult to improve on and shockingly easy to fuck up. In the Square family, I've always preferred FF6 to Chrono Trigger, but I think it's undeniable that CT's graphics and gameplay hold up better even if it's a shorter game with less-developed characters. And as for A Link to the Past -- well, that would be the other of my two favorite games, and it needs no asterisk.

The other thing that needs no asterisk? Final Fantasy 6 has my favorite video game soundtrack. Its depth and breadth are stunning; it's Uematsu at the top of his chiptune game. It's the only video game soundtrack I've ever bought, and if you name any of the 12 primary playable characters, Kefka or Gestahl, either of the airships, or for that matter most of the locations in the game, I could hum the tune off the top of my head. (And I could probably get either Gogo or Umaro, too, but I admit I might not be able to come up with both of them right away.)

Now, I love what OCRemix is but the truth is that in the past I've found their work hit-or-miss-but-mostly-miss for my tastes. The artists there, understandably, lean toward the techno/electronica style, and that's not my cuppa -- which I guess may be ironic coming from somebody who's checking out cover tunes of old video game songs in the first place.

Anyway, there's a good bit of that stuff on Balance and Ruin, but there's a whole lot else, too. There are plenty of orchestral arrangements here, and the soundtrack runs the gamut from faithful homage -- A Fistful of Nickels, by zircon, XPRTNovice, Jillian Aversa, and Jeff Ball, takes Shadow's Ennio Morricone influence to its logical conclusion with whistling, vocals, harmonica, violin, guitar, trumpet, and Jew's harp -- to riotous reinvention -- The Impresario, by Jake Kaufman and Tommy Pedrini, reimagines the Opera scene by way of Bohemian Rhapsody with a quick stop at West Side Story on the way -- to impressively effective minimalism -- Shnabubula and Gabe Terracciano cover the entire Ending Suite with nothing but a piano and violin.

At any rate, it's delightful, and the whole thing's a free download. Go to ff6.ocremix.org and you can grab a nice legal free torrent of the entire album in FLAC -- or MP3, if all this talk about SNES games has left you nostalgic for inferior 1990's technology.

You know what it makes me wanna do? Replay FF6. Random encounters and all.

But which version? The new Woolsey Uncensored Edition looks promising. On the other hand, I liked Slattery's translation quite a bit too; maybe I'll give FF6 Advance another shot. With the music patch, of course.

I should probably finish Last Story first. You know, the soundtrack's no FF6, but Uematsu's still got it.

Go, Ken, Go! -- Part 5: Settlement!

2013-07-08, 9:57 pm
Categories: Comics, Games, Politics, Stream of Consciousness

For my previous coverage, check out the Ken Penders tag. In particular, the first post has a relevant disclaimer that (1) I tend to side with creators over publishers generally and (2) I corresponded with Ken Penders in the 1990's and he was a nice guy.

Anyhow, looks like I'm a bit behind on this, but last week brought the biggest news yet: per TSSZ News, Archie and Penders have settled and the suit has been dismissed.

What I predicted in Parts 3 and 4 still holds: we'll learn some of the terms of the settlement in the coming months (we already know Ken is moving forward with The Lara-Su Chronicles so I think we can safely say he has the rights to publish original comics with Lara-Su in them); some will stay confidential. Penders v Sega and EA is still ongoing, though this puts him in a better position as it establishes that he does have standing to sue for infringement, even if it still has to be established that Dark Brotherhood infringes his copyrights.

I think it's also safe to say that Ken would be happy for Archie to continue using his characters and reprinting his stories -- so long as they pay him his share for that use. And that if, say, the echidnas stay lost in that warp ring, that's Archie's decision not to pay Penders, not Penders's decision not to let Archie pay him.

But I think there's something much bigger coming.

Penders wasn't the only guy freelancing for Archie's Mamaroneck office in the mid-1990's. And he wasn't the only guy doing it without signing a contract first.

There are potentially dozens of other Sonic alums who have been watching this case and waiting to see if they've got a shot at winning their rights back, too. Scott Shaw has already filed for copyrights on his Sonic work. He won't be the last.

Archie v Penders is over. But this is only the beginning.

Update 2015-09-24: And Penders v Sega is over too; it was dismissed in 2014. I discuss it more in Part 6.

As for Scott Shaw and other creators seeking to reclaim their copyrights in the same way that Penders did, I haven't heard any news on that front, though I suspect we won't; given how the Penders case turned out, Archie is unlikely to file any more lawsuits, and I suspect that if other creators raise similar challenges Archie will settle with them quietly without getting the courts involved. It is possible that this has already happened, though it's likely that we'll never know.

Weak

2013-07-04, 9:42 pm
Categories: Comics, Stream of Consciousness

My dizziness has mostly been improving, but today it was pretty bad. Wound up going to bed and staying there for about the past four hours.

Head's not really together enough to share much just now; no Fourth of July insights or reviews of comics I read today (the last half of the latest Sergio Aragonés Funnies was even better than the first, while the Unwritten/Fables crossover didn't really satisfy me as a fan of either series and frankly felt a little icky) -- maybe I'll get to that stuff another time.

Image Goes DRM-Free

2013-07-03, 9:31 pm
Categories: Comics, Politics, Stream of Consciousness, Tech

Yesterday Image Comics announced that it's going to start selling digital comics from its own site, independent of third-party distributors, in standard formats and DRM-free.

There are a lot of reasons for Image to pursue a DRM-free option. Chief is that DRM doesn't fucking work and anyone who wants to get the latest issue of The Walking Dead illegally can get it whether Comixology's version has DRM or not. Second is that this rampant piracy of The Walking Dead has somehow failed to prevent it from being a sprawling multimedia bestseller.

But I think what really precipitated this decision isn't The Walking Dead at all -- it's Saga.

More specifically, Saga #12 and its asinine, albeit temporary, ban from the iOS version of Comixology.

I wrote about the story back in April. Gist is this: Saga #12 was an arguably-slightly-dirtier comic in an inarguably-already-pretty-dirty series; Comixology decided not to sell it in the iOS version of their app out of a reasonable but, it turns out, false presumption that it would run afoul of Apple's vague, capricious, and arbitrary content guidelines.

In a nutshell, it was an object lesson in the one thing DRM actually is good for: locking publishers into a single distributor who may not always have their best interests at heart.

You know, for those who needed an object lesson because they were too busy scratching their balls to notice how this exact thing caused a problem for the music industry and then later for the book industry.

But hey, it may have taken Image awhile, but this still puts them way the fuck ahead of all the other major publishers, and they absolutely deserve praise and encouragement for doing the right thing. And they deserve your business for it.

Only problem is, it's still early days and the Digital Comics section is looking a little sparse. I'll plan on coming back with links when my favorite Image books are available -- those'd be the aforementioned Walking Dead and Saga, plus Chew and Prophet, off the top of my head.

This is good news, and I hope and expect it will be just the first step in the comics industry realizing what the music industry already has and the book industry is starting to: that standards-compliant, DRM-free formats aren't just better for consumers, they're better for publishers, too.

Ditko Package

2013-07-02, 9:45 pm
Categories: Comics, Stream of Consciousness

Got this in the mail on Saturday:

Steve Ditko Package

It's what I bought in the Ditko Kickstarter back in April -- The Ditko Public Service Package #2, plus various other goodies, some Ditko and some non-Ditko, from publisher Robin Snyder's collection.

I've barely scratched the surface of this delightful haul, and I think it's far too early for me to do a writeup that would do it any kind of justice. Suffice it to say it's just what I'd hoped for -- brilliant and raw and undiluted and baffling and infuriating and contradictory and didactic and oblique and funny and heartbreaking and ingenious and so very, very pretty to look at, in turns and sometimes all at once.

So yeah, I'm pretty happy with it.

Bring on the next Ditko Kickstarter.

But I'll need some time to finish reading all my stuff from this one.

Memoriam

2013-07-01, 9:25 pm
Categories: Announcements, Stream of Consciousness

I grew up in Prescott, kinda.

I didn't know any of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, but I guess my brother went to high school with some of them.

I dunno what the hell else to say. Here's a link to Prescott Firefighter's Charities. And thank a firefighter today, why don'tcha.

And it's a small thing, but hey, if you could try and pronounce the name of the place they're from right, that wouldn't hurt. It's "Preskit". Like "Biscuit".

  • Andrew Ashcraft
  • Robert Caldwell
  • Travis Carter
  • Dustin Deford
  • Christopher MacKenzie
  • Eric Marsh
  • Grant McKee
  • Sean Misner
  • Scott Norris
  • Wade Parker
  • John Percin
  • Anthony Rose
  • Jesse Steed
  • Joe Thurston
  • Travis Turbyfill
  • William Warneke
  • Clayton Whitted
  • Kevin Woyjeck
  • Garret Zuppiger

My thanks to them. My condolences to their friends and family.

That's it, I guess.

'Neath Satan's Sweaty Ballsac

2013-06-28, 6:29 pm
Categories: Stream of Consciousness

It's 116 degrees out today.

And cloudy and humid.

When I stepped out the door after work, I actually groaned, "Oh, Jesus."

When I say "It is literally an oven out there," it's not because I'm one of those assholes who uses the word "literally" to mean "not literally". It's because today at work we had a potluck, and the people who brought hot food just left it in their cars until lunchtime to keep it warm.

When I got in my car I burned myself on the turn signal -- and I'd had a shade in my windshield all day. On my way home, I was relieved when I got close enough to see that whatever's on fire and billowing a huge cloud of smoke into the sky is a good ways northwest of my house.

Tomorrow's forecast is 119. Which, well, I guess the good news about when it gets up to 119 degrees is it's probably not going to get any hotter. (Phoenix's all-time record is 122, and that was 23 years ago.)

And while the humidity is awful, it also means the monsoons are coming and we won't have to put up with this shit for much longer.

And the other good news is, I have made it back to my air-conditioned home and I have no reason to step outside again for days.

My pants are off, and they are staying off.

Cartooning

2013-06-27, 9:16 pm
Categories: Comics, Stream of Consciousness

I've posted these bits from Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics before:

Chart of Realistic to Iconic Cartooning

McCloud as Iconic and Realistic

McCloud mentions, in one of his essays in the Zot! collection, that when he was working on Zot! he studied Peanuts and tried to figure out how Schulz managed to convey such a huge range of expression and emotion with such simple drawings -- and that this line of inquiry ultimately led to that chapter in Understanding Comics.

And you know who's got this whole "simple cartooning" thing down?

Sergio Aragonés.

The other week my wife and I took our 2-year-old nephew to the comic store. He made a beeline for a display case full of Batman statues. He looked at all of them, excitedly chanting "Batman! Batman!" But there was one he focused on more than any of the others:

Sergio Aragonés's Batman

He was excited. He was tapping on the glass. He was enthralled.

He's a smart kid.

And I got to thinking, what is it about Aragonés's art that has that kind of appeal? That speaks to a two-year-old, even through two whole shelves' worth of Batman figures?

Just look at it -- the pose, the arms, the fingers, the teeth, the eyes, the nose, the cape, the skinny little legs.

It's expressive. It's funny. It's exciting. And it's exaggerated as hell.

A collection of body parts in a bunch of simple shapes, most of them big and round.

It speaks to us on a fundamental level. A level so simple a two-year-old can see it.

Aragonés is a master. He may be the greatest living cartoonist. I wouldn't argue with someone who suggested he's the greatest of all time.

I was at Phoenix Comicon last month. Most of the artists were approachable. Eastman and Capullo were the only two who had real lines -- and they didn't just have lines, they had three-hour ones.

So my TMNT #50 went unsigned, because there's no damn way I'm waiting in line for 3 hours to meet Kevin Eastman.

I guess that brings up the question of what artist I would stand in line 3 hours to meet.

And I think, maybe, maybe Aragonés. If he ever came to Phoenix, and was just sitting in Artists' Alley signing things instead of spending the entire time doing panels. He'd be the one guy I can really think of who I'd be happy to wait that long to meet. Not Spiegelman, not Clowes, not Crumb, not Los Bros Hernandez -- I love those guys, but I wouldn't wait in line three hours to get their autographs But Aragonés? Yeah, maybe.

And I guess maybe Jaffee, too.

Two More Victories

2013-06-26, 8:21 pm
Categories: Politics, Stream of Consciousness

If you want a good rundown of US v Windsor and Hollingsworth v Perry, you could do a lot worse than A home run but not a grand slam for gay-marriage advocates: In Plain English by Amy Howe of SCOTUSblog.

Meanwhile, Ken White of Popehat -- who has previously described gay marriage opponents as "dinosaurs snarling at the asteroid" -- gives us a fun Then 'n' Now contrasting June 26, 2013 Antonin Scalia's insistence that DOMA is not intended to discriminate against gay people with June 26, 2003 Antonin Scalia's citation of DOMA as an example of legislation that Americans feel "protect[s] themselves and their families from a lifestyle that they believe to be immoral and destructive," once again reminding us that the major difference between Antonin Scalia, a clown, and a professional wrestler is that nobody put any talent or creative energy into designing the silly outfit Scalia wears to work.

On the long road toward our gay brothers and sisters receiving the same legal and social status as my recently-married ass, this is just one more step -- but it's a big one.

My immense gratitude and thanks to Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kennedy for choosing the right side of history, whose arc, I'm told, is long but bends toward justice.

And to all my LGBT friends and family, tonight I raise my beer in your honor. Even those of you who prefer martinis.

Dizzying

2013-06-25, 6:58 pm
Categories: Stream of Consciousness

So this past Saturday I finally went to see the doctor about the dizzy spells I've been having. (I realized, after I got there, that my existing GP doctor is listed as "in network" on my new insurance's website but also has a smattering of disclaimers around it saying that's no guarantee of coverage. So I've got that to worry about now, too. Man, healthcare in this country...)

She agreed with my assessment that it's most likely a result of allergies and congestion around the ears. She told me to buy some maximum-strength Sudafed (an ordeal in and of itself; I hate the hassle of buying Sudafed -- but hey, totally worth it since it's done such a great job of solving Arizona's meth problem!), use my nasal rinse, and drink lots of water, to get my nasal passages rehydrated and clear out the gunk.

I'm a few days in, and it's hard to say whether I feel better or not. The nasal rinse is one of those things that always feels legitimately unpleasant but does clear up the passages -- aside from the part where you drip varying combinations of snot and saltwater out your nose for the next few hours. When I'm not dribbling like a leaky faucet, I am breathing better than I have been.

Still feel congested, though. Still dizzy, and had a wicked headache today besides.