Mory Buckman

Every character Jim Cheung draws looks identical. Same (to a lesser degree) with Mark Bagley, or Takeshi Miyazawa, or John Romita Jr., or a lot of other artists whose work I admire. I guess I ought to want the characters to look different from each other, but I've gotten used to it. After a panel or two, I just accept it as the artist's style and stop worrying about it.

X-23 was first introduced to the Marvel Universe (as opposed to the cartoon) as a prostitute in the series NYX.

As I recall, he only chased gave Janet superpowers because she looked a lot like his dead ex-wife.

Oh, I didn't see where you said Web of Spider-Man was cancelled. I didn't know about that. Never mind, then.

There aren't really fewer Spider-Man comics than ever. Amazing Spider-Man is twice a month, and then there's Web of Spider-Man, so it's still the same number of issues per month as there have been for years. In addition there's Astonishing Spider-Man and Wolverine, which is every other month.

"And really, she's about the only one there is at the Big Two; it's taken Renee Montoya since 1992 to get where she is today, after all, and Batwoman's still new enough that as great as her stories have been and as much as I want her to stay around, there's no guarantee of it."

Marvel's got a whole bunch of characters from the past ten years who look like they might have staying power. The most obvious one is The Sentry, but there's also Amadeus Cho, the Young Avengers (at least some of which will probably stick around), the Irredeemable Ant-Man, and Agent Brand (who will probably be one of those characters who pops up whenever there's a plot she's convenient for).

You do remember the rumble pack for the DS, yes? The one that was used in Metroid Prime Pinball and a few other games? This patent could easily be talking about that. Sorry.

I go back to Metroid Prime 2.

This looks poorly considered. The delay between sound and gameplay is so huge that they might as well be totally disconnected: you're just playing a random game, with random musical accompaniment. This is only a novelty, not a premise for a game.

War of the Full Moon

It's a werewolf-themed game, set in a world where it is always night and the moon is always full. Everyone starts out as a human, but if you're ever bitten by a werewolf you will turn into a werewolf very soon after that. The humans can build weapons to fight the wolves, but the better weapons require resources spread out around a large area. There are no NPCs in the game, and no scripted story events. I think the game would be exciting enough without them.

The humans communicate via Wii Speak voice chat, and the wolves cannot communicate with each other at all. (Or at least not in human ways. They can bark and point and all sorts of little gestures like that, but nothing particularly expressive.) The appeal of being a human is that you can work from within a community, and the appeal of being a wolf is that you can go anywhere and explore everything in relative safety. (It's much harder to kill a wolf than it is to bite a human.) Anyone (wolf or human) can be bitten or killed at any time, you don't need to wait for the game to tell you you can. So if you see a person who's just been bitten, you can kill him. There would be a lot of chasing in this game, and there's platforming all over the enormous world to make that more interesting. Also, humans need to tap a button repeatedly to run, where the faster they tap the faster they run (up to a certain limit). Unless the human player's really fast on the button, the wolf is going to outrun him without having to press anything.

The humans can build defenses and towns, but if the wolves attack the town in large numbers they should be able to get in and start biting people. (The humans need to coordinate their efforts to protect the town at its weak spots.) There are many caves to hide in, which are easier to defend but much harder to get out of. The way for humans to protect themselves is with "sun crystals", which make daylight for small areas around them. These sun crystals are rare, but they can be carried around to move from place to place. They run out of energy a short time after being activated. A wolf who walks into a daylight area turns back into a human, cannot bite, and can do almost everything a human can do. But unlike an unbitten person, a bitten person can't talk. He can still hear everything that's being said, which makes him a good spy. (There would always be much paranoia among the humans.)

When someone is killed, he can't play the game for a few hours and then he can create a new (human) character. The fact that each character is tied to a specific Wii makes this a lot more manageable than if it were on PC.

In addition to the sun crystals, there are lots of other kinds of useful items all over the world. There's one item that lets wolves fly (letting them get around quicker) and humans rise up into the air (making them good scouts). There are some which can be used as mystical weapons. There's one which lets wolves talk (so whoever got it can coordinate the others, or could be a great spy). All of these items get used up a little whenever you use them, so after a while of using it it breaks and is useless. When an item is taken, it takes a full day for another one to appear there. So there would be a lot of fighting (and killing) over who gets the items.

There are also lots of fun side-games which the two races play among themselves, where you advance in a more RPG-ish way and compete with your brethren. But at any moment these activities could be interrupted by fighting. This adds an incentive to eliminate all the other side in a certain area, because you want to be able to get far in these side-games. It also adds a lot of risk to getting killed, because you lose all the progress you made in these.