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Babylon 5 – Reflecting upon times past

Mark Canty
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Babylon 5 – Reflecting upon times past

The recent death of Jerry Doyle got me thinking about many things, not least of which was mortality. A lot of people in the US knew Jerry as a syndicated, right wing talk radio host, with passionate opinions and a thirst for making people think by shaking their certainties, no matter which direction they leaned. Another group, not limited to America, knew him by another name, though: Michael Garibaldi of the space station Babylon 5.

Babylon 5 Cast

Jerry was one of the leads of the SciFi series Babylon 5, which started in 1994, and ended in 1998. Encompassing 5 seasons, 110 episodes and 6 television films (not to mention 10 novels acknowledged as Canon), Babylon 5 had an arc storyline with a beginning, middle and an end, as well as numerous other stories for characters and groups that interwove with this, sometimes affecting it, sometimes merely passing alongside for a while. Running alongside Star Trek: The Next Generation and then Start Trek: Deep Space 9, Babylon 5 had a troubled genesis, changing from one TV network to another for the 5th season, after almost ending early, causing it to have an uneven final season.

It spawned a couple of spin offs, neither of which matched the success and quality of the original, and was lucky to have been blessed with a number of very good actors in leading and supporting roles, as well as a showrunner and Executive Producer who also wrote 92 of the episodes: J Michael Stracynski.

J Michael Straczynski

The show was often controversial, rarely afraid to drag politics, religion and racism into the future, arguing that there was no panacea for these things – That they were common to all sentients and needed to be dealt with together. Babylon 5 showed that scifi on TV didn’t have to be Star Trek to survive, that you could grow and thrive, and things didn’t have to return to ‘normal’ every week.

It dealt with adult themes like terrorism, betrayal, free will, love and growth. It’s characters loved and hated each other, sometimes at the same time. There were strange bedfellows, secrets and lies, and allies of convenience. Friends betrayed friends, enemies became allies, warriors became philosophers and Gods were brought low by their own hubris and overconfidence. As you watched the series, sometimes someone would say something, or something would happen, and your mind would go back an episode, or a season, or even several seasons, and you’d think “Ah.. THAT’S what that was about!”

Kosh, Abbut & Talia

Babylon 5 was rarely boring, only simple if you weren’t paying attention, and the fact that JMS wrote the entire third season without any assistance still blows my mind. He started the series with an idea and a dream, and through 110 episodes and 6 films, he managed to make it happen more or less as intended. Writers creating scripts who weren’t JMS would be told certain things needed to happen, and to work around it, little knowing they might be setting the stage for an epic disaster a year or 2 later for a character not even introduced.

Actors and characters came, and went, but many stayed. Guest stars proved they could be every bit as entertaining, if more sinister, without their silly Russian accents, and geeks fell in love, and sobbed many times. I may never be able to listen to a rendition of “A Modern Major General” with a straight face again. And on top of this, JMS made time to talk to the fans, and answer their questions on the nascent internet – He recognised that the fans had a stake in the series, and nurtured their enthusiasm in the newsgroups, before social media.

"The kind of conversation that can only end with a gunshot"

Very few of the lead characters were what, or who they seemed – They all had tragedies and hidden strengths, and non were even close to perfect. But they believed in each other, even when they didn’t believe in themselves, and they often refused to give up when a sensible person would have been tapping their heels together and whispering “There’s no place like home” repeatedly. Sometimes the surprises were chilling and sinister, as with the blameless and tragic Talia Winters, the object of Michael Garibaldi’s (slightly stalkerish) interest.

Often, though, the surprises were what they found themselves, and each other, and what others found in them – Inspiration,and leadership from people who were thought of by their own leaders and allies as liabilities or pawns. Often, their growth was a positive thing, but sometimes it was also an illustration of the old warning – “Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it!”.

None of them were who they started as when we reached the end of Season 5. Some of them served as inspiration, some as warnings Some as both in equal measure.

Londo and GKar

When we first met G’Kar, he was a bombastic, irascible figure, a fanatical leader of the Narn guerrillas who had fought the Centauri and made them bleed, until they left his people to try and rebuild their civilisation. He became the Narn Ambassador to Babylon 5 to protect his people and punish the Centauri, by any means necessary.

Londo Mollari was a tragi-comic figure, an Ambassador who was only there because he was so unimportant nobody could be bothered to dispute to his appointment, bragging of the days of glory long past and seeking to be as important as he claimed to be, scratching for scraps of power. His people were tumbling back to their core planets, looking out at the remnants of an Empire they were too old, decadent and weak to hold onto, and bragging of their resurgent glory to come. Desperate enough to grasp at straws, they almost ended themselves and everyone else.

Who would have thought that 2 beings who despised each other, and everything they each stood for, could come to respect each other, in their way, and help to build a new galactic order, let alone that their destiny would intertwine them so thoroughly throughout the years of their prime, and their twilight.

Ulkesh and Lyta

Lyta Alexander, the minor telepath who saw too much, and paid the price – The slayer of shadows, and the spark that lit the fuse on the Telepath War. Ultimately her desperate need to belong was stronger than the power that was foisted upon her, and she became a pawn, traded off, but never truly appreciated… I’d like to think she found a way to get past her memories and mistakes.

Michael Garibaldi, the hard working security chief who did everything right, and cared too much, but was only saved from the trash heap by an old friend who valued his tenacity and loyalty. That his caution (bordering on paranoia) and drive would be twisted and used to hurt him and those he cared for, and yet ultimately lead him to a lost love and a beloved family was a tragic journey with a bittersweet ending.

Lennier

Poor, poor Lennier, who served Delenn so faithfully and wouldn’t hurt a fly, and yet, ultimately would be an unexpected Judas, betrayed by his own love for her. And not forgetting Vir Cotto, the stumbling, bumbling Centauri aide to Londo Mollari, who would become the Emperor of the Centauri after the Shadow war and everything that followed it, and finally got his wish from Mr Morden…

Vir Cotto

There were moments of triumph as well as tragedy, and Babylon 5 constantly reminded us that the light is not so bright without the dark, and nothing is black and white. The vicious, chaotic Shadows, lurking at the fringes of knowledge, and the mysterious Vorlons, champions of Order, moving people and populations like chess pieces, neither quite who they appeared to be. The strangely exultant truth of the Hole in Sinclair’s mind, and his destiny, bittersweet in it’s own way. And Mr Bester, who did what he felt was right for his people, no matter the cost to those abut him, but occasionally redeemed himself a little. His actions and motivation made more sense later, when the veil of secrecy was lifted,and his actions were judged in context.

Alfred Bester

As a group, the cast and crew of Babylon 5, with a couple of exceptions, get on well, and regularly interact with each other and the fans.

One thing that stands true for them, and for the fans of Babylon 5, is that we have got used to loss. Actors, artists and professionals who we might never have met (Though the fans that have, and do meet them, tell us how awesome they are) have taken us to far off worlds and shown us wonders, and then left holes in our hearts when they unexpectedly pass beyond the veil – For a group that was, relatively speaking 20 years ago quite young, many have gone earlier than expected, though you often find that all made the most of the time they had.

Richard Biggs, who played Stephen Franklin, died quietly in his sleep aged 44, in 2004.

Andreas Katsulas, known once as ‘The One-Armed Man” in the Fugitive, who made G’Kar so dynamic and engaging beneath much, much makeup and latex, left us at the age of 60 in 2006.

Zack

Jeff Conaway, Zack, also known as Kenickie in Grease, left us sadly as the result of many problems with addiction in 2011, at 61.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVs7Qexc6YU

But many fans will mourn the most Michael O’Hare, who played Commander Jeffrey Sinclair, the first commander of Babylon 5. Leaving at the end of Season 1 to be replaced by John Sheridan, he passed away in 2012, aged 60. Only after his death, when a promise had been kept, did we learn how troubled he had been, and how he had fought his demons to ensure that Babylon 5 got it’s first season intact, and the crew wouldn’t lose their jobs. The fans took him into their hearts when revisiting his performances in Season 1, 2, and his final visit in Season 3 after learning the truth.

Unlike Star Trek, or Firefly, Dollhouse or Jericho, Babylon 5 got 5 seasons. Also unlike Star Trek, however, it never got a successful spin off, or theatrical films. There are rumours JMS may try a relaunch, or a film in the years to come. I hope it will be a better spin off than Legend of the Rangers, with the potential Crusade had before the networks crushed it. A remake seems troubling – You can’t help but think that it won’t be the same – That without the actors that breathed life into his wonderful characters, the lightning may just decide not to strike twice. But then you think of Battlestar Galactica, and there is a glimmer of hope.

Babylon 5

I’m planning to revisit Babylon 5 over the next few months, and I’m hoping you’ll join me in thinking about it, both the good and the bad. For some of you it will be a chance to meet new friends, for others it will be a return to meet old comrades, including some who are no longer here to grace us with their with and talent. But I’ll let you in on a little secret. When I watch the end of Sleeping in Light, the last episode of the 5th season, I still, all these years later, shed a tear as we say goodbye to everyone. Though we met some of them again later, it was never really the same, and all these years later, saying goodbye to warriors, diplomats, leaders and friends is bittersweet, knowing that so many who were in Babylon 5, or worked behind the scenes to make it what it was, are no longer with us.

Sheridan and Delenn

And so, without further ado, I bid a “Zooty, zoot, zoot!” to you all…

Project Highrise – Management can be fun!

Mark Canty
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Project Highrise – Management can be fun!

A few of you might remember, back before Maxis was chewed up and swallowed by EA, a little game called Sim Tower. Instead of running a city, or a country, or a world, you were in charge of building and taking care of a single building and it’s occupants. It sold OK, but was a niche game which meant it was never revisited by EA, who want everything to sell BIG. Project Highrise is a new take on the same concept – you’re an Architect, a Building Manager, a Promoter and a Lobbyist, plus so much more. You have one real challenge – To build a successful building, keep your tenants happy and not suck. You have to maintain the building you create, allocate space for a mix of uses:

  • Offices – Different industries and different sizes, and every occupant has their wants and needs.
  • Residential spaces – Apartments of different sizes – Basic, standard, luxury – Even penthouses!!!
  • Retail – Various sizes of stores offering services, food and other products to consumers to encourage them to visit, or to buy dinner on the way home!
  • Eateries Lunch stands, cafes, restaurants of different sizes, and cuisines, serving snacks, breakfast, lunch and dinner depending on the type. Residents want to enjoy themselves, and businesses like to take people out to dinner, while they also bring visitors.
  • Building Services & Utilities – Maintenance, housekeeping, refuse collection, electricity, plumbing…
  • Decorative – Artworks, etc for spaces not being used for other purposes

You and your building are evaluated on certain things:

  • Money – you start with some, you spend it to build and service the building, and receive it as rent.
  • Influence – Gained as people move in, you hit population milestones and for other events. You can hire lobbyists that use this to help you improve your building, lobbying for zoning changes to build higher, or to allow you to build a metro station, bringing more visitors
  • Prestige – How popular and prestigious your tower is – Do the ‘In’ people and cool businesses want to be seen to be in your tower?
  • Visitors – the number of people visiting your tower to use the services and facilities
  • Residents – The number of people living in your tower
  • Workers – People working in your tower’s offices
  • Buzz – Promotion, gossip – How high the profile of your tower is int he greater city – This can be spent on promotional campaigns to lower costs, improve footfall or other things.

There are some nice tutorials to help you get started, and of course there’s an advisor who will helpfully, if slightly condescendingly point out what you should be looking at. The tone is quite positive overall, and a little bit hip – A little art deco, a little modernism, a dash of 50s futurism, 60s swing and a dash of the 80s drive to make it a little timeless, overall. If you’ve watched Mad Men, though, you’ll probably get it.

Project Highrise

The basic game in Project Highrise just gives you a plot of land – You can use the money you start with (Lower difficulty level means more starting money) to build and invest in facilities. As your tower grows, you find that the more people are paying, the more services they expect, strangely enough! Services (Cleaning, maintenance, store rooms for retail shops, etc) have to be built underground, and you can only build so far down – Definitely not as far as you can build up! This makes for a bit of juggling, as I’m sure you can imagine. Utilities have to be provided, depending on the type of spaces you’re allocating – Electricity, Phones, Gas, Water – Even Cable TV! (Yes, it’s an American-styled game, in case you hadn’t guessed already). You also need to hire Lobbyists – Otherwise you can’t use your hard-won influence to bend the rules!

Highrise Scene

 

Utilities don’t just need wiring – Each floor needs a wiring cabinet and a plumbing cupboard, and there are service rooms for them – Phone exchanges, switching boxes for the power, that define how many connections you can handle, so they need to be built (and take up space underground). It’s all very much a challenge. As you put in residential spaces and restaurants, there’s also bins and recycling. Please don’t think it’s all Rainbows and Unicorns!!! Everyone has an issue, everyone wants a break, and so it’s quite the juggling act, whether paused, running at normal speed or high speed. You’re juggling chainsaws that are calling you names and trying to spin faster so they can take your fingers off! Project Highrise will not let you off the hook once it thinks you should know better!

You also have a range of contracts you can take on, challenging you to achieve certain objectives, usually in exchange for money: Build a certain number of a certain size of offices, housing a certain mix of different industries, Achieve a certain maximum number of visitors, Take a certain amount in rent, etc.

This means you’re working to have money in the bank, jump from challenge to challenge (You can have 2 contracts open at once, sometimes 3), and keep building within the limits of your plot and regulations to keep bringing in new people – Usually to meet your current challenge. If you’re not sure how well things are going, I’d recommend the satisfaction view to depress you – It gives you a chance to see who isn’t happy before they move out. Individual visitors can be clicked on for a status report, as can apartments, offices, etc.

Did I mention that you have a maintenance office, because your building gets tired after a while? This means you have to pay for them to refresh things, or you hear the screech of tyres as a tenant disappears off into the distance!

Highrise Scenario

And then to top it all off, Project Highrise has Scenarios – Usually a predefined building a bit further along, with tenants in place and limitations on the plot, and you’re challenged to make a success of it – It’s definitely a challenge! there’s lots of filters to see who’s happy or unhappy, if things are broken, if there are funny smells from restaurants or bins upsetting people – And financial reports. You can keep yourself very busy researching – Or you can play it by ear, That’s mostly me. It does mean you’re reactive at times, but it stops you from getting bored!!!

Overall, I’ve enjoyed playing a lot – Sometimes I do well, sometimes badly – Sometimes both at once, depending on which scores and parts of the tower yo’re looking at! I’ve also lost a lot of time to it. A couple of days worth over a week or so of actual playtime. This is not a game you can successfully ‘spend 10 minutes on” unless you have someone shouting at you to stop playing and do other (boring) things. It’s rather engrossing.

On top of this, just before the release date, the developers, SomaSim, and the publishers, Kasedo, have added in Mod support. As if it wasn’t threatening to eat my life whole already!!

Performance

Project Highrise - 1000npcs

OK, so it’s not Medal of Honour, or Unreal Tournament. It’s definitely not Battlefield or Eve, either. It’s got a nice, clean visual style, slightly art deco, that doesn’t need a monster computer to run it, and can even be run in a window. I’ve not seen any issues with it’s performance, even with 70 storey tall buildings or above – It just runs smoothly, keeps track of things and makes sure to encourage or berate you as necessary. so far the only things that have gone wrong when playing this game have only occurred between my ears, and I’m running a computer that’s a couple of years old, and was only upper mid range when it was built.

Project Highrise should run happily enough on most credible gaming PCs.They recommend a Core i7 with 4Gb of RAM, and a dedicated video card with 1Gb of VRAM, but it will run on an i5 with 2GB and integrated graphics, and takes up a mighty half a gigabyte on your hard disk – I think some triple A titles have textures bigger than that, and are nowhere near as much fun!

Overall, I admit that Project Highrise is probably not everyone’s cup of tea. It is, however, well written, fun and addictive. It fills a hole in my life I didn’t realise was there until I installed it and tried the first few tutorials. And now, with Mod Support, who knows what we’ll see next? Good old Steam Workshop, whatever did we do without it once upon a time??

I urge you to give this game a try – It may surprise you, when you suddenly realise it’s 3am, you’re off to work in a couple of hours but you just need to build 4 more floors…..

Have a look at Project Highrise on Steam to learn even more.

On Popstars, Nice Guys and my love-hate relationship with Max Landis

Callum Tyndall
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On Popstars, Nice Guys and my love-hate relationship with Max Landis

I should start by saying that I really want to like Max Landis. I do. Most of the time I actually do like him and I’m certainly a fan of large amounts of his work, whether it be the truly brilliant and strangely informative short film Wrestling Isn’t Wrestling, the fairly bizarre but oddly likeable Mr. Right or what perhaps serves as my main reminder that Superman doesn’t have to suck, American Alien (yes, I know there are swathes of other excellent Superman comics out there proving he doesn’t have to be boring. I’m a Bat fan, I will always require a special attraction to pick up a Superman book). My most consistent interaction with Landis however, and I say interaction even though this is very much a one way street attention wise, is following him on Twitter. And here’s where the difficulty comes in, because 140 characters really isn’t the best way to sell yourself and sometimes Landis can come off… disagreeable. And that’s fine, we shouldn’t always agree with everyone and particularly not those we hold up to some strange elevated status but it’s tricky to go from “I love your work” to “Sometimes I kind of wish you’d just shut up and take a minute to think through what you’re saying”. There is one thing however, that keeps being said, that needs to be talked about. Original movies are dying.

In these days of reboots, remakes and adaptation franchises galore, this isn’t a particularly unique or, funnily enough, original idea. The more worrying concern is its accuracy, the threat that original ideas have no current place in the current cinematic market. Two examples I place as important. The first, Shane Black’s The Nice Guys. A brilliant film, directed by a master of the craft and with a truly top notch cast.  And yet, on a budget of $50 million it made just $57.3 million, a profit that is unlikely to see the film fulfil its teased sequel. Similarly, the Lonely Island’s latest cinematic outing, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, made only $9.5 million off a $20 million budget. This despite the film not only being funny, as would be expected, but actually showing off some real acting chops. I’ve always been a fan of The Lonely Island and I’ve enjoyed Brooklyn Nine-Nine but I always saw it as Andy Samberg pretending to be the character, Popstar was the first time I was actually convinced of him as the character. Both films featured talented casts, strong scripts and came out as financial disappointments.

popstar1

To my knowledge, and admittedly I do try and keep up with films, they were well advertised and had enough of a presence that people should have been aware of their screening, yet clearly that marketing didn’t hit. Now, arguably these are films that occupy niches that aren’t what you’d expect to draw the biggest crowds, being a crime noir and an R rated musical.On Landis’ side meanwhile, broadly action comedies like American Ultra and Mr. Right with stars like Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Anna Kendrick and Sam Rockwell seem like they should bring in a fair audience. Admittedly American Ultra suffered from mismarketing as a stoner comedy and both films were not of a size to receive the kind of marketing campaign that something like a Marvel film would get but in just the base nature of these films, it would appear that they shouldn’t flop the way they do. I make no claim to being an expert in the film industry and while these films certainly vary in quality, none of them, to me at least, were of such poor quality that they should have flopped.

There is of course a large problem with saying that original films are dying. It is oh so easy to blame Hollywood and the industry at large for not investing in new ideas in the way we believe they should.There are obvious cases of studio interference and mismanagement with project but, far too often, the bottom line is this: the audience chose what film to see. If it can be shown to me that a film was poorly advertised, I will accept it was at a disadvantage. Obviously original ideas, in not being the perceived easy money of sequels or adaptations, are not necessarily given the budget to market at the level of say, a Transformers. But it is just too easy for me to perceive the complaints as bitterness against the fact that audiences just aren’t seeing the smaller films. Here’s where Max Landis comes back in.

Photo: Phillip Faraone/Getty Images
Photo: Phillip Faraone/Getty Images

Max Landis is successful. He has made a fair amount of money and been involved with a fair number of projects. Yet, at least in the cinematic field, he has not yet received the level of critical praise that may be expected for a creator with his level of recognition. So as one may expect, there’s a reasonable level of backlash to any critique he makes against films along the lines of “you haven’t made anything good so how can you judge”. And while the idea of who gets to judge films in an objective tone is a whole other argument, there is a difficulty with Landis in that, when he complains that original films are dying, part of me can’t help but think there’s an edge of resentment to the statement that isn’t based in fact.

There is a clear industry trend towards films of a certain type at the moment. Unless you’re Christopher Nolan or Quentin Tarantino, you’re unlikely to be making original films that achieve truly stratospheric levels of financial success. But whether or not the blame for that can rest on anyone but the film’s relationship to the audience is questionable. It should not be discounted that there is a large amount of fear in the way the industry runs, picking promotion based on predictions revolving around odds of guarantee. Maybe it’s a self-perpetuating loop, The industry doesn’t think that original films will make money so they don’t invest enough money to promote the films, causing said films to not make money and inhibiting future investment.

Now, if someone can come up to me and definitively prove that all original films flop due to marketing or some other form of studio interference, I will gladly accept it as truth. It seems more likely to me though, more real that, for whatever cultural/societal reason, we have chosen that we want this to be the era of the superhero film and the mega-franchise. General audiences choose not to watch smaller, unique films because those experiences aren’t what they want. We live in times of endless information, it’s possible for you to find films of almost any kind if you so want. The fact that we don’t is not something that can necessarily be attributed to some cold and heartless machine of industry. The market speaks but that market is built upon the choices of the audience. Ultimately, when we go around blaming Hollywood for killing ideas, maybe we need to first take a look around and see when we last invested in those ideas ourselves. Like any industry, cinema responds to money. It could be, that if you think the dearth of original cinema is an issue, you’re not putting yours where your mouth is.

 

Sugru’s Rebel Tech Kit

Peter Ray Allison
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Sugru’s Rebel Tech Kit

Looking for something for that special geek in your life who has everything? Well, Sugru may well have the answer with their Rebel Tech Kit.

Part plasticine and part superglue; Sugru is mouldable glue that, once set, retains its form and adhesiveness to whatever it is moulded to.  Basically, unroll some Sugru, apply it where you want it, mould it shape, and then leave the Sugru to set.  Naturally, anyone who is even vaguely imaginative, or who has ever picked something up and wondered “what happens, if…” can instantly see the hundreds of possible uses that Sugru can be put to.

However, buying someone a tub of mouldable glue does not sound the most appealing of presents, and as such the creators of Sugru developed the Rebel Tech Kit.

The Rebel Tech Kit comes with four sachets of Sugru (stored in a compact tin with a moulding pick), plus a small entertaining handbook introducing readers to the various solutions that Sugru can be used for.  These range from fixing phone mounts on bikes to moulding game controllers for your hands.  The final project was the most interesting, and involved using Sugru, a Raspberry Pi, a tripod and an old webcam to make your own security camera.  It is also incredibly useful for mending cables, where the sleeve has become damaged

So far we have used Sugru for fixing a cracked freezer shelf and a repairing a seal on a children’s toy.  I am also planning, having recently rediscovered the joys of biking, to use one of the sachets of Sugru to attach a phone mount to my bike.

I should add that the Sugru comes in four distinct colours (red, green, grey and black) for those wanting to colour-coordinate their modifications.  Coloured glue may seem a weird choice, but given this is mouldable, and can be used so that it is on display, being able to colour coordinate your personalisation is incredibly useful.

Calling this a “Rebel Tech Kit” is a bit of an exaggeration, as it is not so much a kit, but a selection of Sugru in a compact case with a handy instruction book.  Nonetheless, the Rebel Kit Tech is a genuinely useful, if not essential, addition to any geeks or techie’s Christmas stockings.

Jean-Claude Van Johnson

redshirtjamie
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Jean-Claude Van Johnson

I knew this man had something more to offer us than the rest of the 80s and 90s action stars when I saw this scene.

You can never look away.

After a brief stay at whichever resort old school action heroes trundle off to after their flame burns out, Jean-Claude Van Damme AKA The Muscles from Brussels started to slowly infiltrate our smaller screens.

First up, we had this eye watering moment.

Then he showed us his angelic side.

Of course… this happened.

Keen to demonstrate that he was so much more than high kicks, truck splits, snow tricks and crotch dips he agreed to star in the Belgian crime thriller JCVD, which achieves SO MUCH MORE that it sets out to do. There’s a link below to my favourite scene from the film. Maybe it’s because he delivers the speech in such a beautiful language, maybe it’s how the lighting picks out the rough crags and lines of his face, maybe it’s because Van Damme is just an incredible actor. Who knows. Make up your own mind.

Skip to 2016, and he’s back again with a pilot on Amazon Prime that has a similar concept with a much lighter tone.

Jean Claude Van Johnson sets up the premise that all of JCVD’s earlier, possibly misguided cinematic endeavours were nothing more than a cover for his work as a world saving, bad guy slapping CIA operative. Retired, older and out of shape, living in a mansion with coconut water in the pipes, rolling around in solitude on a Segway with a silk gown billowing behind him he has found himself out of the spotlight, out of the spy game and out of passion.

Without spoiling anything further, a chance encounter leads him to make the decision to jump back in and he soon finds himself on a mission, starring in an action re-telling of Huckleberry Finn complete with slow motion axe battles in the rain and vape smoking hipster directors.

Shot beautifully, and with a truly blissful soundtrack and genuine laughter inducing scenes seamlessly paired with genuine emotion and tragedy it’s a shame that this show has to battle it out with the other Amazon pilots to be considered for a full season pick up.

The Brusseled Muscles are back and in top shape. I can’t wait to see what this incredibly ridiculous man does next.

 

Have you seen all the Amazon pilots? What did you make of them? Will JCVJ kick them square in the face? Do you have an excellent Jean Claude Van Gif to share with us? As always, hit us up in the comments.

Mass Effect Remaster Gets Left Behind

Lauren Croft
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Mass Effect Remaster Gets Left Behind

Earlier last month rumours began to circulate that the much loved Mass Effect franchise was going to be the latest in a long line of games to receive the remastering treatment. This was all down to EA’s very own Executive Vice President Patrick Soderland who dropped hints and raised hopes everywhere by discussing the possibility of a remaster and the current market associated with them.

Unfortunately it looks as though this will no longer be the case.

image

With the anticipated release of Mass Effect Andromeda, EA’s executive Patrick Moore has now stated during a recent interview with IGN that they are a “company that is focused on delivering for the future” and discussed the probability of a remaster.

“Can we make an easy buck on remastering Mass Effect? Yes. Have a thousand people asked me that? Yes, they have,” Moore added. “We just feel like we want to go forward. There’s a little thing called Mass Effect: Andromeda that we’re totally focused on at BioWare and it’s gonna be magnificent, anything that distracts from Andromeda, including Mass Effect remasters, is not something EA would want to pursue”.

Mass Effect Andromeda has been in development since late 2012 and is still anticipating a March 2017 release.

Although my weekend is now slightly ruined, the thought that EA and Bioware are committing themselves completely to Andromeda gives me high hopes for the future release and sets the bar sky high!

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Home-grown Heroes of Irish Comics (Part 2)

trekkiemark
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Home-grown Heroes of Irish Comics (Part 2)

The second part of my journey takes me to the magnificent Convention Centre Dublin on the banks of the Liffey; a strikingly modern building affectionately known to the locals as “the tube in the cube.” This 8000 capacity venue was brimming with nerds from all fandoms the like never really seen in Ireland before, a testament to the rise and acceptance in pop culture fandom.

The rise in such conventions has gone hand in hand with the growth of the indie Irish comic book industry evident in that there were over thirty artists and writers presenting their work at the Comic Con Gallery.

Cast Concepts

Hugo Boylan is a Dublin based comic book writer who publishes both in print and online. He frequently collaborates with other members of the local comic book scene. Hugo showed me some of his creations that he had on offer.

HB: Superhero Helpdesk was one of the first things we made with Tree Farrell, we did that for about two years and we got the first collection out. It goes free online every Monday.

High Fantasy is a comic that I did with Amanda Spitzner about three years ago and it’s about a group of adventurers who are really bad at being adventurers; they end up committing a regicide and things just keep getting worse from there. Those are the comedies I do.

I’ve also got a book called Malevolence which is launching this year and I can’t say much about but it’s a crime horror story, it’s a very Irish story. It’s about a kid who has a sister who emigrates and things keep going wrong for him, there’s a racist cop who hates Irish people, has a chip on his shoulder about the protagonist and he want’s to get him.

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GP: What got you into comics?

HB: My cousin when I was young, I think I was 8, showed me 2000 AD, Alan Moore, she really got me into comics, I didn’t buy one until I was 14 and every weekend she would pass me the latest things that she read. But it got me into the whole world of narrative sequential art and narrative story telling. What you can do in comics is so different than in novels, plays and poetry and even in film. In one particular book I have three timelines going at the same time and they collide at the very same time on the page. It’s very difficult to do via the written word but achievable in comics. That’s why I love comics. I’ve been writing for about 4 years; I did about a year of planning before we did the helpdesk. I’ve got a buddy who I collaborated with and it took a long time to finally get the work down.

GP: Where do you feel the comic book industry is at in Ireland at the moment?

HB: I wouldn’t really say we had an industry per say but we’re coming along to having a great community going. Some of the quality is amazing, The Guards (see below) is really impressive; the quality of that book will blow you away. There are guys here who were selling prints last year now they are producing comic books, proper high quality stuff.

GP: What’s your process when it comes to writing a comic?

HB: As a writer I start with what I want to write. For instance malevolence I wanted to tell an Irish story, a very Irish story. I wanted to draw from Irish myth; the power of three for example or the emigration side of things, leaving home is a huge part of our identity, we were forced to leave our country in the early 1900’s so I wrote that into one of my stories. I’ll take a week, do a draft and Kerry will review it and give it the criticism it needs, so from there I drank a load of coffee and got to it. I was lucky in that the artist John Quigley approached me and asked did I want to do a comic together. One of the biggest problems is for writers to find collaborators and the easiest way to get around that is by paying as many of the artists I work with as possible for their work. I try to pay them as much as I can, we don’t make that much in the small press but we’re all here in this community trying to do the best we can and a lot of people understand and appreciate that.

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Julie Nick‘s Twitter page describes her as a “drawer of comics” and fine comics they are too. Her work channels retro stylings of pulp fiction and has a somewhat traditional Gothic quality to it.

JN: I have two books happening right now The Clockmakers Granddaughter and Pulp Stories. I make comics generally. I’m collaborating with Hugo Boylan one based on Edgar Allen Poe stories the other is my pulp series, it has two short stories of ladies kicking butt in the World War Two era. I try to play with storytelling and I like to have lots of action in them and pulply goodness.

GP: When did you start? What got you into comics?

JN: I’m originally from Romania and I started reading comics when I moved her four years ago. It just blew my mind. I knew I wanted to make this, comics are magic, and it’s like a movie in your head when you read it so I knew I wanted to get into this so I’ve been creating now for two years now.

GP: Of all the local heroes of comic books who do admire the most?

JN: There’s lots of people to admire, there’s the pros who’ve been doing work for years who’ve been paving the way for us to do it now and get recognition  Stephen Mooney, Nick Roche and Declan Shalvey, they’ve been doing great work for a while now. There’s so much talent these days. It’s a really cool community to be a part of. It’s buzzing with talent.

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Jason Browne is one of the co founders of Button Press Publications whose MO is to create uniquely Irish stories which are accessible for all regardless of age.

JB: They’re based in an alternative Ireland. The Ireland that exists is an Ireland that everything we know from the myths and legends is actual history. So that’s the basis of the history and so we move to the modern day. It’s the idea that these different races married into the mortal humans so their powers and attributes are channelled through in certain lines. These are manifested as superpowers when the character reaches adolescence. We created the world called Hibernia and we have stories that exist outside of Dublin in different parts of the country. We use real locations and historical subjects to provide the back stories, Wicklow, Antrim, Kerry etc.

GP: What got you into comics?

JB: I’ve always read comic books as a kid, specifically the American ones superhero ones. I work part time at Forbidden Planet in Dublin. I found that working in store that I couldn’t recommend certain comics for kids because a lot of them were 13+ so we started with that gap; trying to create a comic that everyone can read but at the same time not talking down to them. It’s doing really well now it’s paying for itself so that makes it even more fun.

GP: Who do you admire in the Irish comic scene today?

JB: There are so many people now and especially with social media it’s opened the door for so many people. I can advertise online, I’ve got comics on sale in New York, Toronto, and London. There’s a huge fan base in Mexico! If you have the idea, the passion you can do it, you can go out there and do it yourself! It’s a constant learning process. The more you draw the better you get.

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Shane Ormond and Kevin Keane spoke to me about the creative process behind The Guards. They, along with Colin O’Mahoney and Alice Coleman,have created “a paranormal crime drama about people who don’t belong.”

SO: It has its roots in True Detective and David Fincher’s Se7en. Do you remember that that film had an almost supernatural quality about it? That’s what we wanted to go for.

GP: So what got you into it? Why start writing comics?

SO: Down in Cork there’s a couple of lads, Turncoat Press, they started a comic book club down there. The comic book scene in Cork for the past few years has been kind of dead, the interest is there and the people are there for it but there was nowhere to go or anywhere to meet up. So these lads started the comic book club in a pub in town and that’s how I met Kevin. After a lot of discussion we just thought “f**k it, we’ll do it ourselves!” I was developing a shorter more condensed version with another collaborator which didn’t work out which in turn got Kevin involved. It was a cascade of coincidences.

The Guards is literally fresh off the press, the reception has been great, the lads from Pubcast give us a mention and a lot of people have been coming over to see us on the basis of that endorsement.

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KK: It’s a labour of love; it’s something you have to get out. When you see it realised, in front of you, its tangible it’s all justified. Everyone’s got their own aspirations, everyone knows where they want to end up but just for now this is just perfect. Just seeing people picking it up and taking an interest in it is so validating.

GP: So where do you think the Irish comic book scene is at these days?

SO: It’s stronger than ever, the standard is higher now for small press publishing. For the last few years it’s been in development; there’s different levels of quality and ability of work as in there was a huge gap in quality but now the people who were lower down have really come on and closed that gap. There’s an even playing field now. All these guys here at Comic Con on these tables are putting out work, it’s all such a high standard now that the collectors and buyers are going home with some really good stuff, they’re genuinely supporting a growing industry. Up here in Dublin it’s massive because of the size of the city but down in Cork there’s guys like us fighting in the trenches fighting to keep it going.

Whilst this article merely scratches the surface of the Irish Comic Book scene check out the news from ICN (Irish Comic News) to keep on top of some of the great talent that’s coming out of the Emerald Isle.

Tobin’s Spirit Guide: a review of every spook, specter or ghost.

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Tobin’s Spirit Guide: a review of every spook, specter or ghost.

“Are you troubled by strange noises in the middle of the night? Do you experience feelings of dread in your basement or attic?, Have you or your family ever seen a spook, spectre or ghost?, If the answer is “yes,” then don’t wait another minute. Pick up the phone and call the professionals…”

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With the release of the reboot hitting cinemas everything that could be made into ‘Ghostbusters’ merchandise IS being made. Hostess are giving us Slime version Twinkies, Hi-C orange juice are re-releasing their Ecto-cooler (it’s a green coloured orange juice) and of course the classic Ecto plasm slime in a tub.

But the best thing that has come our way, by Insight Edition Publishing, is their Official GHOSTBUSTERS edition ‘Tobin’s Spirit Guide’.

Mentioned repeatedly by Dr. Egon Spengler and Dr. Ray Stanz in the Original Ghostbusters movies and through the animated series, Insight Editions has really thought outside the paranormal box to deliver something that is really worthwhile and visually brilliant.

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There are two versions, green and red, both hard backs with a creepy black gloss illustration of the classic ‘no ghost’ logo. The pages are nice and thick and printed with the utmost care, as if the printers themselves were Ghostbusters fans. Dr. Ray Stanz writes the foreword giving us an introduction into the world of the Paranormal and explaining the different types of ghost and their class.The book itself is written by the two veteran Ghostbusters and Erik Burnham and illustrated by Kyle Hotz.

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Inside features some amazing art work by Hotz and includes some memorable ghosts, spectres and class 4 free roaming vapours such as; the taxi cab ghost, the Scoleri brothers, Slimer and yes even the Big Guy!

We also see some ghosts that many of you won’t remember unless you frequented the animated series “the Real Ghostbusters” like Spook master, Samhain!

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The afterword is done from that of Dr. Egon Spengler and the way it’s been written you swear it’s come from Harold Ramis himself and its accompanying picture is that of a ghost trap! An amazing way of finishing a book and it really gets you in the feels.

Its presentation is lovely and written in a way that it doesn’t leave you scratching your head and looking for a dictionary to find out what a word stands for or it’s meaning; With every subject  detailed and explained with a great backstory and history.

Illustrations as I said before are flawless and they have been drawn from the point of view of sheer terror, for example; Slimer (labelled here as the green ghost) doesn’t look like the little spud we all know stuffing hotdogs into his mouth. This one looks sheer horrifying and not what you would expect.

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Care and consideration has gone into producing this book with the thought and respect for the fans in mind. The red (or green) on the cover is the only bright colour you will see in this book, the rest of it is black and the pages are coloured like ancient parchment which gives it that feel and look of a century’s old book making it that much sweeter for fans or collectors.

This is a must have for any Ghostbusters fan, with a price tag retailing at 19.99 (that’s pounds) it’s the more affordable and worthwhile bit of memorabilia to own or want for that matter and I give it a 5/5 rating. I keep my copy close to my bedside near my PKE meter because well its simple “I ain’t afraid of no ghost!”

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You can order yours direct from insight at www.insighteditions.com or maybe in with a chance of winning a copy in our Ghostbusters giveaway

Armikrog Review – Geek Pride

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Armikrog Review – Geek Pride
Image taken from Armikrog website
Tommynaut and Beak-Beak, the doughy heroes of Armikrog.

Before I dive into this review, I feel that I should present to you a small portion of my gaming history. I dig point and click adventures. I dig them with a JCB that wakes you up at 7am on a Bank Holiday Monday. I dig them like I’m looking for bedrock in Minecraft.

Monkey Island, Loom, Beneath a Steel Sky, Simon the Sourcerer, Day of the Tentacle and even Leisure Suit Larry. I’ve picked up fish and pans, used breath mints and followed the shopkeeper through the woods time and time again.

I also dig Earthworm Jim, a game which I still jam into the top of my Megadrive when procrastinating in the office and ignoring emails from clients. So you can imagine how swiftly I tore the arm off our fearless leader when the review code for a new point and click game from the creator of that Megadrive mega classic became available. It was pretty brutal. Sorry, Matt.

From the start, let me say how excellent the visuals of the game are. In a time when story and characters seem to be second place to graphics and visuals, it’s a bold move by the developers to opt for claymation. The intro sequence promises many a hoot, and perhaps the occasional full on LOL as the epic theme tune bellows out “ARMIKROG” before we’re treated to a great cut scene of Tommynaut battling with a many eyed beastie.

Then the game begins. I spent the first few minutes trying to wrestle the cursor under control. I played Armikrog on the Xbox One, so can’t comment on the Wii U or Steam controls but on my console they flat out sucked. The cursor would scream across the screen at the slightest touch, with no acceleration or feedback upon finding an item to interact with.

Interacting with items is a hit and miss affair. I’d pick up a lever by clicking on it, then put the lever in a hole by clicking on it. No “use this” or “insert this”, just click… click… click. Later on I did the same thing, but I have no idea where I got the second lever from. In fact, this happened quite often. I had unknowingly acquired an item (almost certainly a stick or a lever) that I would then use on something by accident.

On top of this the screens are large and very flat, so it can be difficult to engage with the puzzles and feel any sense of satisfaction upon solving them. Again it is just clicking on something in the hopes that the item you needed had somehow materialised in your inventory.

Remember the great feeling you had when Guybrush Threepwood gave the Fettucini Brothers a saucepan, and then you got to blast him out of a cannon into a massive tentpole? Or adding parts to your robot amigo in Beneath a Steel Sky? You won’t find any of that here. The puzzles feel like chores, and are often so illogical that I have no hesitation in admitting that I turned to a YouTube guide to speed up the process.

This being said, and gameplay  aside, the humour is spot on. Surreal, charming and often dark it’s paired nicely with the excellent visuals of the game, but the downfall is that this is not a short film. To get to the next funny part or uncover more of the story I have to play a rather broken and joyless game which unfortunately stopped me from seeing the ending before writing this review.

CONCLUSION

Beautiful to look at, hilarious once you have grafted through the awful puzzles and beaten the cursor into submission, but a sadly lacklustre and flat gaming experience.

Armikrog is available to buy now on pretty much every platform you can comprehend.

Zombieland 2 is resurrected (again) by Deadpool writers

James Buckingham
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Zombieland 2 is resurrected (again) by Deadpool writers

When Zombieland was released in 2009, it was a smash hit. Its vicious running zombies and pop culture-inspired humour (largely helped by Jesse Eisenberg‘s running commentary, and one of the best cameos in cinema history) was a winning combination for this twinkie-fuelled undead road trip movie.

Tallahassee, Columbus, Wichita and Little Rock
Tallahassee, Columbus, Wichita and Little Rock

The rights to a series was picked up by Amazon, and with a pilot directed by Tucker & Dale vs Evil’s Eli Craig, it had some promise. However, when Amazon debuted the pilot in 2013, it failed to hit the mark and subsequently the series was canned.

Talks of a sequel to Zombieland appeared to vanish, with not even a hint of there being any interest in a follow up, thanks to Amazon’s failed attempt.

Then, a little movie called Deadpool happened, and the world has been singing the praises of the movie’s writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (and rightly so).

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So Reese and Wernick were also responsible for Zombieland… and now it seems the project has come out of mothballs to be “reanimated” once more. They dropped this very welcome bombshell when speaking with Kevin Smith (all hail our mightly geek overlord) on AMC’s Geeking Out:

“that is breaking news that we’re on Zombieland 2 right now. We’re sitting with Woody [Harrelson] tomorrow and are going to sort of walk him through some of the stuff we want to do. All the cast is pretty excited.”

Let me just draw your attention to that last sentence. “ALL THE CAST is pretty excited”. Does that mean that all of the original cast will be returning? One can only dream!

What do you think, Geeks? Are you excited for more Zombie Kills of the Week?

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