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From the sound of things they're changing the comics to fit the movie. Batman #663 has the new Joker look and the Batman Confidential #7 one has a new origin. I've heard that Batman #251 ,The Joker's Five Way Revenge, was going to be a big influence on the movie. They have a tpb that has this called Stacked Deck: The Greatest Joker Stories Ever Told if you want to read it. Go here: www.ibelieveinharveydenttoo.com. Highlight the page. There's a few anagrams in there. COMEDY IRE MICRO EYED MERYOCIDE CRY DIE EMO things like that. www.seeyouindecember.com is registered to 42 Entertainment, the viral marketing firm that's created Alternate Reality Games for Halo 2 and Nine Inch Nails' latest album. This is just getting started.

It's just you.

Heh, at my other board, the admins met each other and got married. They're nice people. In fact, at that board we've got quite a few couples.

Hey look, a guy with a greatsword. And that's the first retrofuture stuff we've seen. So does anybody know of a "Paradise Falls" stripmall?

Buh?

Hmmm. Easy contact with the staff, Orange County, RPG... ZOMG OBSIDIAN ZOMGZ

Yeah, he's from that Giger school of cobweb-y bioarchitectural freakouts.

Oi oi. Heard a lot of talk about a "Arkham Horror" board game so I went out and bought it and my friends and I have been rigorously playing it for the last few days. Tonight we figured out why the game was so hard: Instead of collective turns, we were giving each player his own turn, and thus exponentially increasing the number of Mythos cards being drawn. We played with 7 people and lost to Azathoth by the 30 minute mark of the game. Anyway, I was thinking, "hey, wouldn't it be awesome if we could make our own **** for this game?" and lo and behold, I found Strange Eons, a disturbingly professional editor for Arkham Horror. It does 90% of the work for you. I thought I'd throw it out there if anybody else was interested. I just finished up a custom Ancient One. I'm using Zdzis

It took C&C about five games to introduce a third faction in their games. It doesn't seem to me as if Blizzard has that much of a "more is better" mentality. 'ceptin maybe WC3, but that was the third game in the series, obviously. Signs point to the Xel'Naga being tied only to the storyline of the game, and probably not being player-controlled.

I don't know where the **** else to put this, so nyeh. I've been going for a few months without fresh D&D experience. I mean, I beat NWN2, and that was nice, but I've got a craving. A craving for more good old D&D narrative. But I have no people to play with (even with a number of ideas bouncing around in the noggin) and in these lowest of times with no blood to feed on I've felt the urge to subsist on the rats of the D&D world - novels. So the question I pose to you is this - What are some decent Forgotten Realms-based D&D novels out there? Do not dissuade me. Believe you me, I'm plenty embarrassed already. This happened once before, and I bought a number of RA Salvatore Drizzt books, which were awful, but my D&D addiction forced me to consume them, excruciatingly, page by page. So I would ask that you all spare me that again and point me towards something less painful.

OUT OF EXISTENCE. Mayhaps this has something to do with Bethsoft's acquisition of the Fallout IP? I mean, it could just be the case that Josh ain't very good with keeping his stuff up, and I haven't checked since a few months back, but the possibility is there. It's a shame, because I have most of the SIMPLE info transcribed roughly into a text document, but I remember missing a few crucial sections and I don't think I covered them. Could be lost forever.

Yes, what about it.

We need a Frank Miller's Fallout. All women are perpetually naked and buxom, and they're all prostitutes.

I just got back from buying and trying out the Arkham Horror board game. We spent about 4 hours feeling through it (pretty steep learning curve) before we had to split at 4 in the morning, but from the looks of things we weren't going to stop Ithoqua from blowing in and starting ****.

I give them a 45/50 shot at making a decent game. The extra 5 goes to making something approaching the original in quality.

Meh. Most of the other devs have been giving pretty good responses. A few cylinder heads, a lot of people who weren't around for Oblivion.

At least they're not making more movies. I remember the Riddick game being pretty decent.

The Highlander was "good television" in a Beastmaster-on-the-WB kind of way, or a Sci-Fi-non-BSG-original-series kind of way, which is to say, it wasn't good television at all, but exceedingly cheap, poorly written fantasy/sci-fi with a pretty protagonist without acting talent. I knew a guy who lived in a house full of Highlander freaks and they made me watched a few episodes, where they introduced the cabal of mortals who kept track of the Immortals? It was absolutely, irrevocably bad.

Hmmm, I wonder what game that whole abortion thing was from. I don't remember the "salted field" story from any game I've played.

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Gothic Theatre, Denver, 5/17/07. setlist as follows: Took Out a Loan Berlin Spread Your Love Six Barrel Shotgun Weapon of Choice Whatever Happened...? (Punk Song) Window Promise Not What You Wanted 666 Conducer Need Some Air American X Fault Line Devil's Waiting Mercy Love Burns Ain't No Easy Way I'd seen BRMC when they toured behind Howl, which I had no great love for. I was much more excited to see them this time, since Baby 81 is pretty great. The band actually started out pretty poorly. The two openers had some sound problems, which spilled over into BRMC's set and were corrected a few songs in. Robert and Peter's voices didn't carry that well, and there simply wasn't that much energy in the venue at the beginning, during the more up-tempo songs, and those songs need energy to work at their full potential. So it wasn't looking good at first, but when Peter switched over to the piano to play "Window" and "Promise", it started to pick up. I was kind of surprised, because when I went to see BRMC last time, the Howl stuff didn't hit very hard. I was bored by it, frankly. But on the other hand, that concert had more inessential Howl than this one, plus a whole lot of middling fare from Take Them On, On Your Own. This time around the set had only a single song from TTOOYO, and only 3 songs from the self-titled. This setlist had some of the more tolerable Howl tracks and a lot of the fresh and vital new stuff. And it worked, it worked very well. They hit a stride when they got to "Need Some Air", one of the faster tracks off the new album. It was during this song that I thought I realized what that mystery element missing from Howl was - Nick Jago's drumming. It was really, really good tonight. Jago was out of the band when Howl was recorded. At this point I had "Need Some Air" as the possible high point of the night. The band goes through "American X" and Peter does some humorously dramatic tricks with the hoody he has on and tries his best to look like a brooding hooligan. It doesn't work. After this, the band exits the stage, and Robert comes back, stage right, with an acoustic and a harmonica strapped to his neck, Springsteen-style. See, the thing about the BRMC live is that they're a very versatile band. Excluding Nick Jago, the members of the band switch instruments between nearly every song. One song Peter will play bass and Robert will handle the guitar, the next song they're reversed. As referenced earlier, Peter played piano and organ, while Robert played harmonica (simultaneous with guitar) They'll also trade off vocal duties, which ensured that even though both Peter Hayes and Robert Levon Been are chain smokers who like to sing in falsetto, the vocals are strong all the way through the hour and a half set. So like I said, I'm no fan of Howl, and when Robert comes out with his acoustic I know I'm in for at least 15 minutes of pensive folkiness. And I'm getting kinda bummed by this. But he starts playing "Fault Line", and he ****ing nails it. I mean, he ****ing terrorizes that song. He's playing guitar and harmonica at the same time, like two people at once. It sounds stupid, but if you didn't see it you'd think there were two people fully invested and focused upon their instruments playing up there. And the crowd loves it, they do one of those "clap to the beat" things, which doesn't sound good, but it was. They give it the best reaction of the night. I was halfway across the theatre and I got the same feeling I got when Iggy walked up in front of me with his mic in his mouth like a chew toy. So there's a bit of a conundrum - Nick's not playing, and a Howl song is good. I decide that what Howl was missing is a few hundred drunk hipsters and a Robert with a few more years of harmonica practice. Robert plays "Devil's Waiting", and it's good and the crowd gets into it, but I always hated that song. Then Robert leaves and Peter comes on and plays a new track solo. It's a Howl track that got cut, and it sounds like the rest of Howl, but there's no harmonica, and the crowd's good and drunk by this point but it doesn't get nearly as much love as Robert's stuff. Rest of band comes out, plays "Love Burns" and "Ain't No Easy Way", which the crowd is pretty into. Some guy in the front row says it's Robert's birthday, which may or may not be the case, Robert doesn't say, but the crowd still gives a good drunken half of the Happy Birthday Song, in perfect unison. And then the band leaves. Great show. Howl session tracks (previously unreleased) - BRMC - Grind Your Bones BRMC - Steal A Ride BRMC - Wishing Well BRMC - Feel It Now BRMC - Mercy

Tour CDR - BRMC - Grind Your Bones BRMC - Steal A Ride BRMC - Wishing Well BRMC - Feel It Now BRMC - Mercy

TRANSFORMERS MUST DIE Na na na na na na na na Batman.

Eh, it may have been said before, but Koreans like their local MMOs and WoW. There's nowhere near the demand for another MMO then there is for Starcraft 2. That Koreans play MMOs doesn't necessarily mean that announcing an MMO won't take more than a fair amount of hubris from Blizzard, or that Korea won't feel cheated if they don't get Starcraft 2. The Koreans know what they want. They want Johnny Walker Blue. Blizzard can bring them some Johnny Walker Black, which is still pretty damn good, but it might as well be warm piss to Korea. They will settle for nothing less than Blue. Blizzard (hopefully) isn't stupid enough to waste their time with anything other than the goods.

Capital.

Don't forget Deathclaws. I never got to the end of DX:IW. Is it another apocalypse scenario? How are they going to move forward?