Reflections from a lapsed Comic Nerd

I've been a video game and movie nerd all my life, but in my early years I was also pretty big into comics, Spider-Man was certainly my favorite, but I had a pretty wide range of comics from every brand. But I eventually got less & less interested, and the Clone Wars saga pretty much sealed it for that I was done. I've retained a somewhat sparse interest, reading the occasional mini series or graphic novel. So, going to this year's Emerald City Comic Con, which was the first such Con I've been to in well over a decade, I felt completely lost and out of place. I barely recognized any of the titles, most of the "name" artists were people I've never heard of, and there just wasn't much I was interested in. Oh it was great to get my photo taken with Jame Bamber and Julie Benz (you check out those photos and some others here, and it was fun to see a fair amount of people in costumes, but I think the most surprising thing is that it was nothing compared to the scale of something like Sakuracon or PAX. It was actually a rather subdued affair, more like a trade show than a communal gathering. I mean sure, vendors are there to mostly hock wares, but it seems like people were also mainly there to buy those wares rather than enjoy the chance to bond with fellow geeks about a mutual hobby. I did have fun overall, but my attendance next year is questionable, probably completely depending on what celebs I might be able to get a photo with, whereas with something like PAX, you could even have Gabe & Tycho not attend and no one there would care because it's much more of a general gamer community thing.

Moving on, the big game news for this week is that the Wii's Xbox Live Arcade-esque service, Wii Ware, is launching this Monday. How does the line-up look so far? It's your usual mix of one or two very promising titles standing out from what looks like complete rubbish. I certainly plan on downloading LostWinds, but I'll wait for reviews of My Life as King, the other titles I don't even care about, but there are already some promising titles on the horizon like Eternity's Child. I really hope this turns into what I hoped Xbox Live Arcade would be, a real great device for fantastic original independent titles. Of course we'll have to wait and see, but the fact that that there will be games launch day that you won't or can't see on other systems is very promising.