Amentep

I think you got it backwards, it started out as cheap entertainment and later evovled into an artform that has everybit as much range of expressions and artistry as anything else. But they dont sell the good stuff at Wall-mart, obviously, so youll have to go looking. Not really; comic books in the US started as reprints of comic books that appealed to a wide range of readers. Through the 1940s readership was strong amid kids and teens, but also GIs in WWII. In the 50s the best selling comics, like the horror, crime and romance comics, sold to teens and adults alike in massive numbers. It was the self censorship movement (the Comics Code Authority) that was a reaction to the United States Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency (1954) hearings (so disastrously featured an appearance by EC's Bill Gains) which led the readers away from comic books. This movement was pushed by the kid oriented publishers (of superhero and comedy material that had seen their reader base evaporate) that helped stunt the growth of the medium, pushing out publishers of more adult comic fare in favor of "safer" reading. (To be fair, there was competing products also vying for attention; adults had also began moving into the magazine successor to the pulps - like adventure and romance magazines - and to paperbacks.) Even with the CCA, comics had lost a lot of ground in terms of public perception; the Senate Subcommittee cemented the media as one for kid oriented works, and a lot of parents didn't trust the media and threw the whole industry in a tailspin that wouldn't recover until the second superhero genre boom of the late 50s. Video games are in many ways in the same boats as comics; there are still many who will argue the media of either can never be art (which is a different argument from whether it *is* art now or not) and that their primary purpose is entertaining kids (and adults who should know better. *tsk, tsk*)

I don't really see the end of FRWL as weak myself although it is overshadowed by the train fight. Although I will agree that the Fleming books are better than the film series by and large, Quarrel's death made me cringe the first time I saw Dr. No and hasn't improved with age. I don't remember anything that out-and-out cringe worthy in FRWL. That said I can also enjoy the campier Bond outings (double-taking pidgeon? Connery in Japanese disguise?) for what they are for the most part. But they're not a patch on the better, more serious adventures.

Kirby drew everything which was my point in choosing him. He did romance stories, he did science fiction, he did crime drama, he did westerns and he did superheroes over his 50-something years drawing comics work. And many people consider him to be one of the better creators (if not the best) who came out of the US System. And he was fast. There aren't execeptions - art takes as long as it takes and each artist will take longer or shorter dependent on their own abilities and expectations of themselves. Saying that manga art is all bad because they produce large amounts of work is just silly. Anyhow most commercial comic work is going to be crap; the good stuff is always the exception and that's true of all the markets, US, EU and Japan.

Jack Kirby - often considered to be one of the founders of US comic book style (having not only been influential in superhero comics, but created the American Romance comic as well as doing work in the earliest horror comics) - could do 8-12 pages a day. Does that make him worse than Pratt? There are current comic artists in the US who can't even make a complete page in a day, are they better than Pratt?

I'm not necessarily sure that just because something can be done by rote (as it were) it devalues the efforts not done by rote. And that's true of comics, movies, television, novels or video games. Hiroaki Samura, Junji Ito, and Yukito Kishiro for example have all struck me as good artists and good sequential art storytellers doing current work.

How is that more believable than them wanting the IP to make money from it? They may want to make money from it, but they may also want to make sure no one else makes money off of it (or creates what could be a competing product with the IP)

Hopefully not tanned teeth however.

The end of Wall-E bugged me personally - how does a disposable consumerism society survive in a spaceship with finite resources (far more finite than were on Earth, which they left because they'd exhausted/garbage-fied)? How do they have the material to make new products when we see Giant Wall-R robots dumping consumer waste into space? How do any of the people stand when they get back on earth having (seemingly) never walked? Why do they even want to go back? The trash is all still there (Wall-E was the last working robot and the trash had been piled up, not actually removed from the planet) so how are they able to come back and survive? And with only one plant? Its a cute film, but to me the first half works where as the second doesn't.

Eh...I think From Russia With Love is a better film, to be honest. The finale of Dr. No always plays goofily to me (and Quarrel's death works worse on screen than it does in the book).

Sometimes its neither.

Its entertaining in 3D; not sure it'd be watchable without the 3D though. I watched City of the Living Dead to finish my backwards watching of the Fulci triology. This time there wasn't any throat ripping or eye gouging! I was shocked! Also watched Graduation Day, one of the goofier slasher films of the late-70s/early 80s.

I dunno, combat never seemed to be difficult enough to be annoying. For the most part it was pretty quick and easy, I thought. Mind you I can stomach even the suckiest of combat models in RPGs for a good story.

There's a huge difference between trying to play 80-something year old film stock and a dvd. Not unlike there's a huge difference between trying to play a late 1980s PC game and a new PC game. Trying to play the original (as opposed to a remastered/reprogrammed) is going to be vexing (and in the case of 80-year old nitrate film, flammable).

I'm having a lot of trouble watching London After Midnight (1927) - maybe you can help? On a bit more serious note, its unlikely that watching a movie from the 1920s (provided it still exists) is like watching one from this year because in the 1920s there wasn't a home video market; watching what films from that period that have been translated into another media (DVD/Bluray) isn't that different from those Namco/Sega/whatever collections being made for another media system.

Is that the head going down a sword loading meter or something else? I thought it was kinda...weird.

Yeah, but so do half the regular discussion topics on the internet. The other half take the circuitous route. Everything on the internet goes to hell eventually. Indeed!

That's a horrible analogy. Van Gogh is widely known and discussed everywhere where art is discussed. PST is something that very few people even know exists. I'm not so sure that people discussing the art of movies, the art of architecture or the art of literature would discuss van Gogh much. In that sense, van Gogh is not discussed everywhere. Art always intersects people's lives differently and through different media. People are more inclined to think of the art they have the most personal experience in than in other forms. If you're not specifically talking about the visual arts and the medium of painting, van Gogh may never get a thought. PST has some respect within the community that looks at the media of video games, so the possibility of a wide discussion is limited (particularly given that video games haven't really been acknowledged as an artistic medium yet, as far as I know)

For any time, Sargy. It's one of the best games ever. I really enjoyed Vagrant Story - always surprised it didn't do better sales wise and for some time it had a fairly low reputation.

True. Weird War (not related to the Weird War PnP RPG?) was intended as the sequel to Another War, but it was never released. Which is a pity, considering all the interesting stuff you heard about it Nope, not related to the Weird War PnP RPG as near as I can tell. Its addictive. Very addictive. That's the whole purpose. The game never ends. The game never starts either, if I spend all my time going into a pit of eternal battle trying to level up my equipment so that I can take on the second story section of the game. I like having options in games, but there is a case to be made that there can be too many options.

Yeah, but so do half the regular discussion topics on the internet. The other half take the circuitous route.

I've found the recent NIS games too "fidlelly". When you not only are worrying about leveling your characters but your equipment the game is expecting far, far too much investment of time for me.

I think it'd depend on how its handled; a number of action games with mana systems allow for rather unsophisticated enemy bashing by mages. Not having a weapon tree doesn't mean you can't bash (or does it?) just that you're not as good at it as someone who dedicates themselves to the fine art of bashing. I dunno, I remember our school plays and a lot of time we winged it (we had a vague idea of the dialogue and where it was going and when we forgot we just said a bunch of stuff). Or maybe I just went to an elementary school with a bunch of low memory kids...

Looking deeper into it, it looks like "Weird War" was presented as a sequel to "Another War" http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/456/456360p1.html Techland doesn't list it amid its games - maybe it was never released?

Thanks but no luck. Oh well. HA! I found it, it's called Weird War and here's your yellow submarine: Your Google-fu is weak, grasshopper. I'm pretty sure that the game actually came out as Another War, and ultimately wasn't published by Techland but by Cenega Publishing. Never played it but reviews on the net seem to be mixed to negative. I loved Culdcept; the card art is fantastic. Sadly I have trouble with and game with more than one opponent.