Living With a Nerd

Our trip down to Hendersonville, North Carolina last weekend to visit my parents was a ton of fun.  We saw the sights (a couple of waterfalls, a couple of mountain peaks as evidenced by the picture above of Brittnie at Jump Off Rock, elevation 3100 feet), took in the local cuisine (the best hot dog stand I have ever been to and a steakhouse that served steak RARE), and caught up on our manga (We both finished the Basilisk series, I finished the Azumangah Daioh omnibus, and Brittnie got halfway through the Samurai Champloo manga series.)  Traffic going down was nonexistent, although we hit some insanity halfway up I-81 on the way back home.

My new mouse and monitor came in.  The review for the mouse can be found here, and the review for the monitor is forthcoming.  I like it a lot…it is barely satisfactory for tooling around on the desktop or browsing the internet, but it is damn near perfect for gaming.  A nearly non-existent response time and excellent contrast really keep things looking awesome, and 23″is a perfect compromise between size and desktop footprint.  It is taking some time to adjust, coming from a Dell 2005FPW, but I think I will manage

My new Asus VH236

Modern Warfare 2 was definitely a lot of fun (review here.)  It was definitely intense, but wasn’t as good as the first one IMO.  I don’t know what it was, it just didn’t hit me like CoD4 did.

This weekend is going to be a big gaming weekend.  I just recently got GTA Chinatown Wars for the PSP…I thought the DS version was fun and it was awesome going back to the overhead view of the first two GTA games, but the stylus use felt tacked on and unnecessary.  I’m looking forward to the bigger screen, better visuals, and control-only input.  I’ve also got Darkest of Days for the PC.  I know it got terrible reviews and that the graphics look really dated, but I enjoyed the demo.  It seems like it could have some really intense sequences, and bad graphics don’t really bother me all that much.  Besides, what with the new Zelda game being released in a few days, Mass Effect 2 coming out soon, and some other non-shooter stuff on the way, I figured after going through Borderlands and Modern Warfare 2 I should get in one more FPS before getting into Torchlight and the RPGs that will be released shortly thereafter.

I do think I’m going to pick up Serious Sam HD if some crazy Steam sale happens during the holidays, though…I LOVED that game when it was first released, and while graphics aren’t that important to me, being able to play a nostalgic game like that with updated visuals would be awesome.

My comic binge continues…I just got Asterios Polyp in the mail yesterday, and plowed through it in one night.  I couldn’t put it down! Very unique, both in dialogue and in drawing style.  Highly recommended.  You can check out my full review of it here.

In addition to Asterios Polyp, I also got I Kill Giants and Desolation Jones in the mail.  Desolation Jones pisses me off though…I didn’t realize that the singles were released so infrequently, and they are still at least three singles away from releasing another trade…oh well.  It still looks awesome.  I Kill Giants was one that I knew I had to have though.  You can read my full review of that one here.

Currently, however, I am going back through Y: The Last Man.  I only read the first five trades, and since the series has been finished for a fair bit of time and there are plans to bring it to the big screen, I figured now was as good a time as any to read through the whole thing.

I’ve been on something of a comic binge lately…For the past couple of paychecks, I have been buying and reading a couple trades of The Walking Dead (I just finished Volume 9 last night), I’ve been reading Crossed by Garth Ennis, I’m about to start Clover (a manga from CLAMP), and I’m toying with the idea of reading Cerebus.

For the holidays, I’m considering buying (or asking for) the Punisher Compendium…a massive, 1100+ page hardcover collection of Punisher issues that has a sewn binding.  It is an absolutely beautiful piece of work, and is the size of a coffee table book.  Due to the sewn binding, pages lay completely flat, so no artwork is lost in the “dip” created by adhesive binding.  Sewn binding is also aesthetically pleasing and very durable.  From what I’ve been told by people that already own the Compendium, it is quite possibly the sturdiest book they have ever held.  Awesome.

I have been following Ben Templesmith’s forays into FIQ, a big art convention down in Brazil.  His stories and artwork have always been stunning, and he is definitely one of my favourites.  While very different in style, Templesmith’s artwork reminds me of Glenn Fabry:  When you look at a piece of work done by Fabry, you KNOW that it was drawn by him without even being told.  Ben Templesmith is the same way…his art style is very distinctive, and lends itself to creepy, violent, and mature stories.  While Fabry’s art style is extremely detailed, with individual muscles showing through clothing and individual wrinkles visible on faces, Templesmith’s style is more “artificial”; everything he creates looks very comic bookish, although it looks like nothing else out there.  Welcome to Hoxford and Singularity 7 are excellent examples of Templesmith’s skills, both with art and with words.  Below is my favourite piece of work I have seen by Templesmith:

Hoxford

Amazing, isn’t it?