Archive for the ‘Books & Comics’ Category

Review: Jon Pertwee Book Of Monsters

Thursday, April 4th, 2013

20130404-125605.jpg

Now this is a disappointment. As everyone knows and agrees, Jon Pertwee’s version of the doctor was the best ever in all fifty years of Doctor Who. One may suppose therefore that the literary output of such a great man would be without reproach. Sadly, that’s not the case.

This, my dear readers, is a book for babies. Containing piffle such as stories about dragons hatching from eggs and befriending children, or man-eating fungus houses, or amorphous blob-creatures that rampage out of lakes and devour dozens of people, there’s nothing very… well now I think about it most of the stories in this book actually are quite monstrous!

But the way they are told leaves a lot to be desired. Many of them I suspect were written in minutes, and even as I read them I supposed I may have been able to do better myself. Let me try:

At last the fated hour had arrived. Kron-pirr viewed the battlefield from atop his Daedalus platform, watching the Void Gigas units assemble their time cannons. At his signal they would fire at the city, breaching the etheric defenses and opening the way for the final invasion. Victory was by no means certain, and the losses would be great. But if the Machine Brain was ever to be defeated, it must be here, and it must be now. Once more Kron-Pirr remembered the events that had led him here: the discovery of the artifact (back when he wasn’t even elevated), the human invasion in which Glork’fth was killed, the accidental reactivation and ultimately apotheosis of the dreaded alien technology. Kron-pirr had indirectly caused the machine revolution, and if his planet had any chance to survive, he must now end it. He noted the Gigases had completed their task, and the troops were ready for his signal. He raised his tentacle…

Hey, that’s not really anything to do with Monsters is it? It’s almost as if the saga of Kron-pirr has taken over these reviews!

At any rate, this book is hardly worth the Pertwee name. My advice: save your gold sovereigns.

A TITANIC ANNOUNCEMENT!

Monday, February 25th, 2013

Can you hear it? That’s the sound of excitement…

Can you feel it? That buzzing in the air? That’s the sound of anticipation…

The moment foretold by history has (once again) arrived:

We’re going back to JAPAN!

DSC09642

Yes my friends, it’s all booked and paid for. Japan trip #5 commences early June, and promises to be even more special than ever. Why is this?

My brother is coming with us!

Monster Hunter! Mizube! Manga! Yakitori! Futons! Apple Pies! Sentai! Circle-Heart-Star! Odaiba! Figma! Enoshima! Deer! Gashapon! 3DS Streetpass! Lopeway! Otaku! Yamanote! Gondoliers! Gundam! Dedicate Bronchus! Guyver! Monkeys! Bullet Trains! Kawaii! Spaghetti! Anime! Neko! Mount Takao! UFO Catchers! Chip Stars! Kit-Kats! Trading Cards! Mr Donut! Nendroid! Universal Studios! Idols! Arcades! Vending Machines! Rice! Crows! Fried Rice! Rilakkuma!

Bernard is going to be awestruck. And having him with us will make it like the first time all over again 🙂

I can, quite literally, hardly wait!

BioBoost!

Tuesday, February 19th, 2013

OMG! Just the other day, Max Factory Japan announced a whole new series of Figma’s, which included such stuff as Avengers, Bruce Lee, Spider Man, dozens of new anime characters and… well, and this guy:

Guyver_zps53028622

Yes my friends, a new Guyver figure! And a Figma at that!

It’s like God came down from Heaven to give me an early birthday present 🙂

But the news doesn’t stop there! I also recently read that the long-delayed Alcanfel bio-fighter model kit has not been canceled and will one day be released. Here’s a shot of it, as displayed at Winter Fest 2008:

archanfel

He’s (one of) the ‘big bads’ of Guyver, and I’d love a good kit of him. Here’s what he looks like in the series:

index

All this excitement makes me want to spring $270 for the Imakarum Miribalis kit, which is the only bio-fighter I don’t have. Here’s a shot:

62679_s0

It’s available on Amazon right now. But $270?!?! That’s crazy isn’t it? It’s more than double what I paid for Pluqstahl (almost six years ago now!).

But my birthday is fast approaching…

My New Novel!

Thursday, February 7th, 2013

Here’s the cover of my upcoming novel:

Pulp-O-Mizer_Cover_Image

I was going to call it Apotheosis Of The Machine-Brain but that name is apparently already taken 😛

New Year’s Resolution?

Saturday, February 2nd, 2013

When I returned from Australia, for some reason I started becoming very aware of the piles of stuff that filled my house. Books to be read. Games to be played. Media to be consumed.

When I was young there was so much I wanted but couldn’t have. Now I can have it all, but – especially in the last year – have been accumulating it faster than I can enjoy it. The reasons are varied (work, World of Warcraft, age), but I’ve never purchased anything I didn’t really want to read, watch or play and, by Jove, it was time to do just that!

So, my first ever (?) New Years resolution: Consume more media!

How much am I talking about here? I will preface by saying we all have little ‘to read’, ‘to watch’ and (some of us) ‘to play’ piles. For instance, I know for a fact quite a few of you – SFL, AW, BS – certainly do. But mine had gotten quite large. As in very large. And it’s time to climb them.

I’ll revisit this resolution at the end of this year, but here’s the scope of what I’m tackling. All of this just describes what is in the house right now, not anything I expect to obtain in the next few weeks or months…

Books

20130202-175200.jpg

That’s the English version of Monster Hunter Illustrations, which came out over a year ago and is jam-packed with all sorts of fascinating MH art. It’s on my pile with two additional japanese MH books including the sequel (!) and a different art book on TCG art. These share a shelf with no less than four additional art books (including Genzoman, Queen’s Blade and the recently released Hyrule Historia Zelda art book). I could probably look through all these in a long afternoon.

But that’s hardly all. There are some 30+ volumes of manga (Bleach, Bakuman amongst others), 16 novels (including some purchased five years ago when a local bookstore went out of business), 2 academic texts (one, on cryptozoology, is almost 800 pages long), about 50 comics and 20 odd magazines. This list doesn’t even include the approximately 100+ gamebooks from a collection of over 200 that I haven’t played through.

How much of this can I read in one year?

Movies and TV

20130202-181738.jpg

I got the above for Christmas. It’s the long-awaited (by me, for one) second full Ultraman series finally translated into English. And it’s 19 hours long. It sits on a shelf right now next to DVD collections of all 4 series of Lexx (over 40 hours in total) and the first three seasons of the Keroro Gunso TV anime (20+ hours). Add to this list 22 more anime DVDs or Blu-Rays adding to more than 35 hours (including the full series of Claymore) and about another 28 hours of UK TV series collections and 30 more hours of (sometimes untranslated) Japanese or Korean series and I start to wonder realistically how we could watch all this in a single year? I haven’t even considered the movies…

Games

20130202-180727.jpg

I currently have, unplayed and in most cases still shrinkwrapped:
– 8 PS3 games (including Hyperdimension Neptunia 2 and Resonance Of Fate)
– 6 Nintendo DS games (including Pokemon Conquest and Shepherd’s Crossing 2)
– 17 (!) PSP games, almost all RPGs, many of which look great (including God Eater Burst and Ragnarok Tactics)
– 11 3DS games, many of which were Christmas gifts (including Theatrythym Final Fantasy and Paper Mario Sticker Star)

That’s 42 games on my ‘to play’ list. With some embarrassment I’ll reveal I have already preordered about 6 more online, and yet right now much of my gaming time is spent playing Warcraft. I think I’ll have to be more disciplined 🙂

Will I succeed? Can I possibly consume all this media before getting overrun? Also, will I stop buying more until what I have has been enjoyed? I’ll revisit this post at the end of the year, and it will be interesting to see how effective my resolution has been!