What I Do

(Other Than This and The Nerdy Stuff I Write About)

Dumbasscience: Science is not always smart. Oh no sir-ree-Bob. Sometimes it is just plain stupid. That's okay, I won't judge. I'll just point it out and mock it mercilessly. These articles will contain rants from history and breaking news where scientists are pursuing through-and-through bad ideas. From the 'flying your car to work' pipe-dream, to various plans of how to forcibly reverse global warming, if it's technological and perilous to rationalists, it's Dumbasscience.

Over the past year and a half, I've been working at an awesome, steady job in a technical field that is moderately controversial these days. Due to disclosure agreements and the fact that right now I'm a contractor in my position, I can't specify my employer. But I can talk with you a little bit about what I do: 3D printing. Its controversy over the past three years had been almost purely driven by ignorance regarding the technology itself and the products 3D printing can produce. Which makes it a perfect cross between "A Day in the Nerdery" and "Dumbasscience".

It's worth noting that I work specifically as a Rapid Prototype Specialist, making form models using Zcorp printers from 3D Systems. These machines produce unique products that can yield full color parts equal to early inkjet printers across an entire three dimensional model, but they almost certainly aren't the ones you've heard of, if any. No, the popular 3D printers in the headlines these days are usually either the latest from Makerbot or Objet printers by Stratasys. I work with Objet printers in my shop as well, though I'm not the primary operator associated with them, and I've researched and prepared to work with Makerbots for our purposes here at work, so I'm fairly qualified to speak on them. In a word, Makerbots are inferior machines that take longer to make lower fidelity parts than almost any other product in the field, and they're held together by Makerbot's outrageously aggressive PR campaign. Objet machines, on the other hand, are some of the most accurate 3D printers on the market, yielding plastic parts of several different materials in fixed compositions.

What Wired Magazine Thinks I Do

Every time I see a new article come up on Wired.com or in some other even more mainstream media, I choke back a little bile in my mouth. Almost every article written for mainstream audiences takes a stance that it has to explain what 3D printing is by comparing it to Star Trek: Next Generation's replicator technology. Really? First of all, I must've missed that moment we slipped into an alternate dimension when plot-expedient technology from ST:NG became common parlance? You couldn't think of anything more relevant to everyday readers? More importantly, however is that if a person is ignorant enough that the replicator-allusion is at all helpful to them, they'll get the exact wrong impression of what a 3D printer is. It gives them the impression of a physical object duplicator, implicitly promising scanning, processing, functionality, and fidelity. All 3D printers are based on realizing a form of a model based on the loaded materials, but that's as far as the analogy to replicator technology goes. Scanning in the 3D printing field is crude and superficial to the point of being only a novelty for rough approximations of a model. Processing is a very specialist-intensive process and requires a large amount of finesse from the printer's operator. 3D printers don't reproduce mechanical functionality unless that functionality is extremely basic and scrupulously programmed by the operator, anything as simple as a threaded piston requires a lot of careful engineering, which means you can forget about the requisite dumb question "can you 3D print a 3D printer?".

No. Just, no.

So what is a much better shorthand explanation for 3D printers? They work by printing hundreds of thin cross-sections of a model in a stack to approximate the model's overall shape as far as layer thickness and accuracy will allow. It produces things of a pre-determined material that merely mimics the shape and form, but not necessarily the function, of the part. Zcorp machines even use a roller for distributing a fine, flour-like plaster powder across the build layer. Other machines distribute resins and use lasers to 'cook' the shape into place. So here's the skinny: 3D printers are basically advanced cookie-cutters for making physical objects, with limitations comparable to that comparison. There. A simple, clear explanation that doesn't require the audience be Trekkies nor burden their impression of the technology with overladen imagery.

What the President Thinks I Do

In recent months, various government officials have made passing comments at the potential of 3D printed firearms and used that specter as the pretext to opening up dialogue to control these machines. Now, I'm not getting political with this, I promise. I'm just going to point out that such discussions of 3D printed firearms fundamentally misunderstands both the printing technology and the technology of firearms themselves. As far as I've found, the most successful use of a 3D printed part in a firearm is right here. As you can see, the 3D printed part jammed on the first shot and broke altogether after the sixth. And the only part of that gun that was printed was the lower receiver, which is nothing more than the part which connects the magazine to the handle, stock, and firing mechanism. So no actual moving or stress-bearing parts were fabricated in this manner, and yet it still broke before exhausting its first clip. Experiments to 3D print more elaborate parts will inevitably result in results comparable to ammunition spiking--which at best just destroys the gun and at worst maims or kills the shooter.

And that's before you call into question the cost of 3D printing at this fundamentally inadequate level. These weapon tests are being proposed and conducted for Stratasys Objet printers, which run $150,000 on the low end and easily cost tens of thousands of dollars to supply and maintain in a year of moderate to heavy use. The tagline that a kid could print this up in their living room must presume that said kid is Jaden Pinkett Smith and can blow a house-worth of dough to make an unregistered gun that is going to be less reliable than a Wal-Mart rifle he could've bought for a couple hundred bucks and some paperwork. And that price tag I've estimated above is what 3D gun-proponent Cody Wilson identifies as 'getting cheaper' when he stresses how accessible 3D printers are becoming.

Now, 3D printed guns will eventually become a viable production method, but only after many years of people risking their lives testing obviously unsafe weapons, and even then hobby gun makers are going to be at the mercy of how fastidiously they maintain their printers. Because one quality all 3D printers share is that maintenance and repair issues often impair part quality without impairing build ability--meaning that before your machine actually breaks to the point of inoperation, you're very likely to produce a part that is just close enough to spec to get you into trouble. The shrapnel kind of trouble, that is.

What my In-laws Think I Do




Here I'm using in-laws as shorthand for anybody outside the Rapid Prototyping field. I can't speak for all other 3D printing specialist out there, but I find that once I explain the technology and its innovations to someone, I can't really stress that the job is taxing in anyway. It doesn't matter that being a full-time rapid prototyping specialist requires cross-discipline finesse involving simple mechanics, engineering, 3D design, physical modeling skills, and working in conditions that vary from physically irritating to hazardous to one's health. The second I bemoan being exhausted from work I get treated like George Jetson wailing about how sore his button-pushing finger is after a long six-hour day of work.

What Designers Think I Do

In my discipline amongst 3D printers, I have to coordinate with designers as I help realize their computer-aided designs in a physical prototype. Some designers are better at keeping their work printable than others, but almost everyone on the front-end of my workflow seems to think that once they send me their data--no matter how bad and in need of tweaking--I just hit a button, sit back, and have Miller time until my easy-bake prototype machine poops out their part a couple of hours later.

What I Feel Like I Do

As I mentioned above, I work with designers, and they have their own timelines and objectives based on what's being evaluated and when. But once the requests filter down to me my timeline and my objective is always the same: as fast as possible and as good as possible. Though oftentimes it's needed faster or better than possible, so I need to make accommodations for that, too. The quality of the data and parameters for the models I build, however, vary terribly from clean and specific to vague and fragmented. So on any given day, my machine-battling rage undulates between frustration at fixing other people's work to trying to pound a square peg into a digital hole.

What I Actually Do

3D printing is a fantastic and sophisticated technology. It involves layers of technical rigor, procedural endurance working with 3D software, and artistic competence. I can spend one day mostly seated at my desk doing data and standing at my worktable polishing finished models, or on another day I'll trek back and forth across my work's entire campus several times, lift 40-pound kegs of printing material, and push and pull my way behind 200-pound machines to examine them for cleaning and repairs. It's a technical job that requires a good back, delicate hands, and an artist's eyes.

Fortunately, I have an extra of each in my desk at work.

"3D printers are basically advanced cookie-cutters for making physical objects, with limitations comparable to that comparison."

Don't Be That Guy: SPD Advisor Wants Crack Down on Heroes

...Making The Streets Safe For Brawling.

You know, I have a pretty skewed impression of Seattle. On the one hand, Frasier Crane lived there and he sure made it sound like a swank place for muckety mucks and snobs to live.

On the other hand, they have stuff like this. Last year on May 1st, a gang known as the Black Bloc used a day slated for peaceful demonstration and activism to tear up the city, vandalizing a courthouse on the way. Apparently, the gang came out in uniform (dressed in black with bandanas over their faces), and they attacked people on the street, blocked city traffic, and damaged buildings as they went through the city.

And guess who was there?

Phoenix Jones and the Rain City Superheroes, a group of real-life costumed heroes who patrol Seattle to crack down on drugs, brawling, and petty crime. The RCS got into the thick of it, and according to them they were defending the courthouse specifically while the police were outmaneuvered by the cleverly dubbed gang.

Picture from https://www.facebook.com/ThePhoenixJones

Sounds a little bit The Avengers meets Kick-Ass, doesn't it? Well, that's probably because Phoenix Jones is Kick-Ass in at least a few ways. I've had part of this article fermenting for well over a year--since October 2011--when, as a temperamental snub against costumed heroes, Phoenix Jones got publicly outed by the justice system.

Yeah, it happened. In Seattle, baby.

You see, Phoenix Jones describes himself as a concerned father who got tired of the crime on the streets of Seattle when a car break-in got his child showered with glass. Now, that'd make any of us mad, afraid, or cowed in spirit, but Phoenix Jones went another way by donning a black and gold protective bodysuit and patrolling the streets at night looking for crime. He's found it. Found it in spades. When confronted by a criminal act, he calls the authorities (which is sadly more than most do) and then steps in to do whatever he can (badassfully). He soon started a group--the Rain City Superheroes--and they watched others backs, supported each other, and helped to coordinate their efforts beyond a one-block at a time patrol.

Even before October 2011, I'd heard of this small-time West Coast crusader. Local journalists had done walk-alongs with him, and the media even reunited him with a man whose car Phoenix had saved from having his car stolen. They also highlighted that he has a base of operations at the back of a local comic book store.

This all happened, folks. This does happen.

"...he calls the authorities (which is sadly more than most do) and then steps in to do whatever he can (badassfully)."

In October 2011, Phoenix Jones was arrested for assault after he pepper sprayed a group of people brawling in the street. No other arrests were reported at the time, just Phoenix. The group of a handful of people fighting walked away, though their anecdotal testimony that they were just fooling around was quoted by the police as the official version of events. As it turned out, the police weren't really interested in proceeding with the assault charge, as nothing was ever officially filed. That didn't stop them from trumping up a public hearing where they forced him to reveal his name and face. (Out of respect for what he does and his initial decision to be anonymous, I'll use his nomme de guerre instead of his given name.) Probably the worst part of this whole ordeal is that every time Phoenix Jones has received media attention--positive or negative--since that hearing, the coverage always includes his real name, as though trying to flush him out of his crime-fighting hobby. I've even read articles where they use his middle name, as though trying to make antagonizing him as easy and transparent as possible.

Skip ahead to last year May 1st, and the description with which I began this article. Phoenix Jones and his associated Rain City Superheroes found themselves once again in the newspapers, once more making the city of Seattle look like Frank Miller's Gotham City while they snag headlines alongside, or even ahead of, police officers. From that perspective, it's easy to see why Michael Hillman, a former deputy chief for the LAPD advising the Seattle Police Department, wouldn't like them. He advised that the Seattle Police find a way to restrict private citizens like Phoenix Jones going out and patrolling for illegal activity.

Yep, life imitating art even more. Surprisingly, though, the Seattle Police Department publicly disregarded that recommendation and said their only interest on May Day or any other day is stopping crime. Good for them, right? Phoenix even came out with some, perhaps, grandiose claims that he would be working with the police on a strategy for combating lawlessness on May Day.

He probably spoke too soon. This year the May Day events and the media's coverage of the Rain City Superheroes has been rather less than favorable. Articles I've read largely undulate between accusing Phoenix Jones and his crew of escalating situations or of being attention-seeking goons scuffling with clowns. And the SPD has been stressing that Phoenix Jones has never solved a crime. It seems that, rather than follow Hillman's suggestion to further infringe on Phoenix's consitutional rights, they decided to go the unquestionably legal route of shaming and decrying his proclaimed goal.



Geez, Seattle. J. Jonah Jameson much?

Now, I've got a bit more to say on the issue of Phoenix Jones specifically and the concept of "real life superheroes" in general, but I'll save that for another time. For now, though, I'll just say: Seattle, don't be that city.

Iron Man 3: Now Tin-foil fortified!

Nerdview: A good review is hard to find. A good review--that is, a quality review, not a positive review--seems to be even more rare amongst professionals and dedicated reviewers. Fortunately, the nerdery is helmed by a literary nut. Each review, whether it is a game, movie, book, or television series, will have the four elements: bias, appreciation, personal enjoyment, and general enjoyment. Put in food terms, these are odor, beef, gravy, and cheese.

So as you may remember from my over-due post a few hours ago, Iron Man 3 is coming out this weekend, and the nerd-gods have demanded my penance in the form of a post-midnight showing review of the movie. And I'm still going to work in a few hours.

I hope you're happy, Internet.

Oh, and I promise: no spoilers here, webbies. I love you too much for that.

Expectations 'Odor': Going into Iron Man 3, there's a lot of weight. We've got Warmachine as an already established character at the start, so Tony won't be a solo act for sure. And the previews seem to indicate Warmachine upgrades to a patriotic version of his amor reminiscent of Iron Patriot (which is an altogether different character in the comics). This is the first post-Avengers movie, so more than any of the following Marvel movies it has to address the dramatic and character-based aftermath. On top of this, Iron Man 3 is apparently going to feature one of Iron Man's most iconic foes, the Mandarin, and cover one of his biggest transitions as he encounters the Extremis. Extremis, for those of you who don't know the comic books, goes hand-in-hand with the development of a nanite adaptation for Tony's armor that basically makes it appear out of nowhere. It's a convenient way of mitigating Tony's greatest weakness--the hassle of donning his bulky armor.

I'll be blunt: I don't like Extremis. As a kid, I always loved that Tony had to pick between different specialized suits of armor: deep sea armor, space armor, or--when caught away from his base--the weaksauce suitcase armor. I also loved the occasional moments in the comics where Tony Stark would need help from engineers, mechanics, or robots just to doff his suit after a very violent encounter as Iron Man. Extremis limits the drama of catching Tony off-guard, it cheapens the drama of his schtick as being 'just a regular guy beneath that armor'. Because, let's face it, you're not a normal guy if you can think a happy thought and transform into a flying tank.

But I'm super pumped for this movie. It looks like they're dialing in the dramatic fallout of the Battle of New York from The Avengers, the added prominence of Warmachine looks great, and Mandarin as a terrorist mastermind fits really well with the continuity of the movies. All said and done, I'm expecting a drama-packed delve into Tony's tortured alcoholic, with maybe enough action and splendor to make me okay with the introduction of the Extremis armor into the second phase of Marvel's cinematic opus.

Maybe.

Appreciation 'Beef': So as expected, director Shane Black's addition to the Iron Man franchise was tremendously different from Jon Favreau's. There's a lot more plot crammed into Iron Man 3 than the other installments, and it does seem to get in the way of the film's pacing finding its flow. The beginning is slightly disjointed in a way that doesn't seem intense enough to evoke the suspenseful opening to Iron Man, but nor is it smooth enough to give the narrative you get in Iron Man 2. Part and parcel to that, there's a good deal less of Tony's personality in the first thirty minutes or so of the movie--less of Robert Downey Jr.'s facile charm and wit, which makes it that much harder to adjust to the new movie's style. That's also mainly due to the plot-filled pace of the movie though, as Tony is stuck in a reactionary role for much of the first part.

A short way into the movie, however, we get Tony Stark back in his usual spastic charm, and we're reminded of why Tony Stark is Iron Man and RDJ is Tony Stark. He's twitchy, raw, and yet still polished and verbose in an off-handed way that flows well through a rather unique set of trials for our protagonist. Gwyneth Paltrow's Pepper Potts gets a good deal more screen time in this movie, but she gets less opportunity to charm with the awkwardness one sees in the first two movies as the first part of the film brings the ceiling crashing down around everyone's heads. Don Cheadle as James Rhodes is good, but he feels lost in the plot of the movie. Especially since I was looking for Warmachine/Iron Patriot to be a fixture of this movie, I was disappointed that his badass suit got about as much screentime as in Iron Man 2 and he got even less dramatic fuel outside of the suit as he did in the previous movie. At one point near the middle of the movie he even struck me as a bit of a doofus--really, Rhodey? You're wearing tactical tank armor in a room of suspected terrorists and you don't think to mute your externals when sharing login info? How could a guy that obtuse get the rank of Colonel in the Air Force's experimental weapons division?

But Guy Pierce as Aldritch Killian, now there's a fun villain. He's introduced early on in a flashback to 1999, and in that scene his pimpled, scraggly idealism reminded me of Val Kilmer's nerd disguise from The Saint--fun, reckless characterization. The stereotypical dork role might get old quickly, but Aldritch Killian is just as quickly shown in modern times to be handsome, put together, and forcefully cogent in his vision of the future. Ben Kingsley as Mandarin...my, what do I say? I like what they did with his role on a dramatic, storytelling, and thematic level. But as someone who really wanted to be more engaged with Iron Man's nemesis, I found the role lacking. And that's not Kingsley's fault--he enjoyably romps in the confines of the role and works within each moment of a dichotomous character.

"...let's face it, you're not a normal guy if you can think a happy thought and transform into a flying tank."

Iron Man 3 features action that is wholly different from the other Marvel films so far. You get quite a bit more out-of-suit fighting that really makes the super-power mook antagonists seem almost too invulnerable, but then at the same time Tony's own armor suits are a little bit easier to crunch (like almost ridiculously so as the conflict escalates--are his new suits so mobile because they're primarily tin-foil parasols?) and less-tricked out than his previous suits. Part of that is plot-based handicap, but even when the plot opens up to indulge in a variety of bizarre Iron Man gadgets, it doesn't and instead relies on variations of the same actions instead. It's a little frustrating. But the action is kinetic and keeps your head on a swivel, and like other Marvel movies it rarely resorts to slo-mo and hand-holding to let you absorb everything. In the end, the action outside of the suits or in partial armor feel more interesting and exciting, though, partly because much of the full-suit action relies on the same gimmick we get to see about thirty minutes into the movie. In the end, the armored action scenes feel like playing a fighting game with a kid who learned just one cool move for their character and then repeats it at different intervals hoping it will be more effective...

Ah, got me in mid-transformation, huh? Well what if I keep fighting you until it falls apart and then I flip to the side and change into another suit before turning to face you? Oh, destroyed that one, too? How about I throw myself off a catwalk and do it? Weren't expecting that now, were you?

The most lacking part of the movie must have been the score. I say must have because I couldn't really follow it most of the time. As the third part of a series--and quite probably the last Iron Man film with RDJ in the lead--I really wanted more homages to the previous film's excellent scores. Reviewing it now I'm especially confused by this as Brian Tyler, who scored Iron Man 3, did a great job of uplifting Battle Los Angeles with his thrilling heroic themes. Maybe it got lost in the mad visuals of Iron Man 3, but in this genre that's hardly an excuse.

Personal Enjoyment 'Gravy': Oh Extremis, why do you do these things to me? The realization of the Extremis enemies was very well done, with them proving a mid-level threat of being nearly untouchable outside of armor and yet still pretty easy to despatch once fully armored. With the exception of one who survives so much more than the others that, with no plot explaining his hardiness, I was left assuming it's a clumsy plot-protection. The armor improvement, while staying away from the nanite from-nowhere option, feels even more gimmicky and overpowered than the alternative. For the suit to deploy, the pieces now individually fly themselves onto Tony and then expand, latch, and envelop him. It's rather silly when a lone faceplate hovers up and flies to him, and it begs the question how many more toys Tony could fit into his new suit if he just decided not to make every single piece flight capable. It also brings up a WTF of how the disparate pieces are powered, since we're left with several scenes where the pieces fly a good distance to get to Tony. I can't believe it, but I think I'd rather see Tony progress to nanite armor than sticking with autonomous flying pieces that put me in mind of Iron Giant more than Iron Man. Also, there's a part towards the end where Tony says something either flat-out isn't true in light of something that happens in the first act or it's an outright lie and just a random douche moment between him and his sidekick.

"In the end, the armored action scenes feel like playing a fighting game with a kid who learned just one cool move for their character and then repeats it at different intervals hoping it will be more effective."

But I liked the boldness of a lot of the movie's choices. The drama of the plot was well-realized, even if it focused less on Rhodey than I would've liked, and it involved dwelling more on Tony being a temperamental bundle of nerves than a reckless alcoholic. His anxiety attacks could have been made to seem more urgent and frightening, but as it is they strike a powerful middle ground between being used for humor and a genuine threat to his confidence and ability to recover his gear. Making most of the action totally different from the other movies was a good move, too. I think one of my favorite action scenes was one where an unarmored Tony has to fashion much more crude gadgets to infiltrate a complex. I know the scene was too short for how much I enjoyed it, and I hope to get some more deleted scenes of it soon.

Overall, the movie passed the ball along. After Captain America: the First Avenger I suspected that my interest would lean further from Tony and more towards Cap, and it seems that hunch is starting to prove itself. I didn't get the payoff I wanted with Iron Patriot, nor the epic struggle I expected with Mandarin. Killian was capable and played his chaotic principles to the nines, but in the end I think I'm going to keep looking forward to Avengers 2 and be satisfied if Iron Man remains only a trilogy.

On the topic of the 3D experience of this film: I really didn't appreciate it. There were a few moments where it was definitely noticeable, and it created a faintly amusing effect, but for the most part I found it hard to feel like the movie was enhanced by the 3D. And since I always forget to wear contact lenses to midnight showings of movies, I was stuck wearing two pairs of glasses for over two hours wondering if I should just rest my eyes at some point. Not exactly the desired effect for a big budget movie's 3D markup.

General Enjoyment 'Cheese': Iron Man 3 is not going to draw in new fans to the franchise. I think that it may lose a few, but in the end it's going to keep the plots moving and the characters progressing. So that means that the foremost audience for this movie is going to be people who, like me, are looking to the future of Marvel movies. Now, amongst us there will probably be a good number who have better opinions of this movie than I do, but I really doubt any of those stellar opinions will last long as the rest of Phase Two comes out. I find it hard to imagine what might bring in people not already in love with the franchise and/or genre to see this movie: I mean there are regenerating minions with lava hands and fire breath as side effects of their healing factor. Not exactly an easy pill to cram down the throat of that person who scrunches up their nose and says, "Isn't that a comic book movie?"

(And no, it's a movie-movie.)

Avengers Reviewed!

So Unnecessary...or is it?

Nerdview: A good review is hard to find. A good review--that is, a quality review, not a positive review--seems to be even more rare amongst professionals and dedicated reviewers. Fortunately, the nerdery is helmed by a literary nut. Each review, whether it is a game, movie, book, or television series, will have the four elements: bias, appreciation, personal enjoyment, and general enjoyment. Put in food terms, these are odor, beef, gravy, and cheese.

By now you should know my general opinion of last year's epic Avengers. I'd had a couple of posts in anticipation of it and I believe I've referred to it as sublime since then. It's true. I love it. But you should know from my stance on review rigor that I won't leave it at that and I hope you wouldn't accept such an unarticulated review from me, either.

But it came out so long ago. Why bother?

First of all, don't be a brat. Secondly, while the review of this movie in particular may be way past timely, there is another Marvel movie coming out this weekend which I also hope to be reviewing. So to help better explain my anticipation of Iron Man 3, and to give you a clearer definition of my Marvel fanboy mania, this review should go a long way to tide you over until you get the Iron Man 3 review.

Which is so definitely going to get posted this weekend. No promises here, just facts.

Oh, and as a tertiary reason for why this review might be helpful for you, at the end I'll tack on my opinion of the special edition Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase One set that came out this past month. You guys really are benefiting from my blogger's guilt today, aren't you?

(Minor spoilers shall flow, but you've already seen this movie ten times or more, right?)

Expectations 'Odor': So obviously, I had long been expecting great things from this movie. I mean, I remember talking about The Avengers while waiting for the first Iron Man movie's midnight showing to start. Before that, I read the first two volumes of Ultimates dying to see it realized in a big, live action movie. Heck, I nerded out over the two Ultimate Avengers animated movies, analyzing them to death as I tried to use them as a reference point for anticipating the live action adaptation. Plus, I'm a dyed-and-true browncoat and a big fan of the early seasons of Buffy, not to mention Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog. And Joss Whedon's work on the X-men comics showed how adroitly he grasped these characters and the fans who love them. So Whedon's credentials added to the fiery anticipation as I devoured every little development update.

But I did have concerns. Whedon loves warrior women. And while that can be a fun asset in certain genres and certain films, the only warrior woman in the Avengers lineup for the film would be Black Widow. And in a roster containing Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, and Captain America, he'd have to pull some pretty unbelievable feldercarb to make Black Widow as dominating a presence as, say, River or Buffy. And I'd be downright pissed if Black Widow got godpowers to stand shoulder to shoulder with Thor and stand over him like Echo, for instance.

"...I've referred to it as sublime since then. It's true. I love it."

The single biggest expectation I had, though, was for party conflict. The Avengers have always been about party conflict. They're a team of the most domineering personalities and power levels thrown together specifically for high-stress and high-risk threats. Of course they're going to butt heads with each other...and possibly level some real estate in the process. And as a director, Joss Whedon excels at depicting party conflict. The crew of the Serenity is at its most gripping and engaging when they're fighting over what step to take next. Buffy and her cheer squad were at their best when they were trying each other, reminding one another of their faults, and still working together to kill the unholies. The Avengers movie would have to be full of the very best action and inter-personal drama, and Whedon would deliver. The only question is how inordinately large a part Black Widow might play in the movie.

Appreciation 'Beef': And boy, did Whedon pull it off. Action more complex and gratifying than anything in the superhero genre. Conflicting angles from all sides. One-liners galore. Maria Hill introduced and given a fair amount of face time. Just the right amount of Black Widow. In a dress. And actually playing the Russian angle.

Yes yes.

"Of course they're going to butt heads with each other...and possibly level some real estate in the process."

And the writing. Oh, the writing. The Avengers has one of the best and most under-appreciated scripts in television. Characters are summed up well in quick, catchy comments that capture the terse eloquence of the very best comics. When Captain America tells Black Widow "There's only one God, ma'am. And I'm pretty sure he doesn't dress like that," he's speaking volumes about his character. Whedon is affirming that Steve Rogers is still a God-fearing American traditionalist: respectful of women, and most importantly never cowed by the apparent power of his enemies. Captain America's most defining trait shines through in this movie at least as well in The Avengers as it did in Captain America: The First Avenger: a fight worth fighting is not diminished by your own odds of prevailing. For Cap, the decision he makes on a regular basis is that if a fight is worth fighting, it's worth facing certain defeat. And that is what makes him my favorite hero.

It gives me sissy goosebumps just to type it.

But the best highlight of the superb writing of The Avengers is the way misunderstandings between characters are rendered in such a believable manner. When Tony Stark tells Steve Rogers "Everything special about you came out of a bottle" you get at once the supreme arrogance of Tony Stark--who's implying that he's the worthiest hero because he's "self-made"--and you also recognize that his disconnect with Steve Rogers is that he doesn't understand what makes Captain America a hero. Captain America isn't special because of what he can do or how he can do it, but because of his innate identity--what he chooses to do. The fact that the writers couched the disagreement in these terms, though, shows that they understand both characters and how a believable dramatization of their biases would lead to a misunderstanding of each other. And of course, Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr. recognize this as actors and do a great job of stubbornly holding their ground in their scenes together.

But an even better misunderstanding between characters can be seen in the absolutely delicious interplay between a captive Loki and Black Widow. It's the only significant interaction between Scarlett Johansson's femme fatale and Tom Hiddleston's emo maximus, but it is superbly written and played. At the climax of their little verbal joust, Loki tries to dig up emotional and psychological leverage from Black Widow, who is ostensibly bargaining for Hawkeye's free will:

Loki: Your world in the balance and you bargain for one life?

Widow: Regimes fall every day. I tend not to weep over that--I'm Russian...or I was.

Loki: And what are you now?

Widow: It's really not that complicated. I've got red in my ledger, I'd like to wipe it out.

Loki: Can you? Can you wipe out that much red? Drakov's daughter, Sao Paulo, the hospital fire?... Barton told me everything. Your ledger is dripping, it's gushing red, and you think saving a man no more virtuous than yourself will change anything? This is the basest sentimentality. This is a child at prayer... pathetic! You lie and kill in the service of liars and killers. You pretend to be separate, to have your own code, something that makes up for the horrors. But they are a part of you, and they will never go away... I won't touch Barton. Not until I make him kill you! Slowly, intimately, in every way he knows you fear! And then he'll wake just long enough to see his good work, and when he screams, I'll split his skull! This is my bargain, you mewling quim!

First of all, I love the profane insult of mewling quim. It's archaic and disgusting, and if people in general had better vocabulary, it'd probably be an r-rated curse. Plus I never thought two years ago when I started this blog and committed to keeping my language PG that I'd have occasion to use the phrase mewling quim. Multiple times, even. Mewling. Quim.

But seriously, this exchange is great because the point in the scene where Loki gets excited, when he starts his evil rant, when he truly and passionately believes he's dressed down this mere woman, is all based on his own misunderstanding. Natasha makes a reference to a modern western convention, "red in my ledger", which refers to the practice of noting down debt in red, but with only a shallow understanding of modern western culture, Loki leaps upon red as the frail woman feeling guilty over shed blood. And so his diatribe begins, prematurely exultant of his social victory, building upon the allusion to blood with dripping, gushing, and violent threats. But what Loki doesn't understand is that his simple misunderstanding of the significance of red leads him to make the exact wrong conclusion. He thinks Natasha is a frail woman feeling guilty over her sins, but in reality the cold killer woman is doing the opposite--she turns killing into a sterile set of numbers in an imaginary book, some of which are red and need to be repaid, others of which must be black and no need to recompense. It's a beautiful scene in which Black Widow establishes that her true deadly arts have nothing to do with stopping beating hearts: it's about the game of outwitting one's opponent and getting them to do the work for you. And, since Loki is undone by a shallow appreciation of verbiage, it's ultimately a victory by English Major.

Boo yah. That's good writing.

Personal Enjoyment 'Gravy': I loved every moment of The Avengers. From the first viewing to the umpteen times I've watched it at work (on my lunch break, of course), it remains a spiritual experience for me on a nerd level. Now, the big taglines I needed in this movie were masterfully accomplished: Captain America being awesome even as he struggles to find relevance in the modern world; Iron Man trying to find the balance between his ego and his personal insecurities; Black Widow being more Russian, using her Widow's Bite gauntlets and still receding into the background when the action gets too big. Hawkeye gets a wonderful amount of coverage too, for being a mere cameo character in Thor previously. And Tom Hiddleston as Loki is a fun villain that chews up the scenery and plays well opposite every character in the film.

"It gives me sissy goosebumps just to type it."

The one grit in my love for this movie--the one thing I would have done differently--is the treatment of Hulk. And bear in mind that I'm being tremendously niggly on this issue just so I can pretend to wipe away my frothing fanboy lather to look sane for a moment or two. I felt that the justification for Hulk to be under control at the climax was necessary, and while I think they gave a valid excuse for Bruce being in touch with his violent, angry side, I just wish the rampage would've either been more horrific, or bled over into more collateral destruction during the climax. Now, given how real and devastating the battle of New York was, I could understand if the creators were afraid of making Hulk add to the wanton carnage and destruction. And, to be fair, Hulk does leave a lot of unnecessary damage in his wake--plowing through an office building to fishhook a flying Chitauri leviathan definitely isn't covered by standard insurance, you know. But the moment that makes me feel just the tiniest bit...snerky is that moment when Hulk backhands Black Widow on the helicarrier and she doesn't even get knocked unconscious, let alone pulped. In fact, she comes back after a little quivering to whup Hawkeye, who probably could've won under some circumstances but definitely should have when Natasha was hot off of getting Abyss-slapped by the jade giant. Chalk this up to Hulk's rage usually getting slightly nerfed and Whedon's love of warrior women, because I still love it.

And of course, Captain America is awesome throughout the movie, but especially in the climax of the film. Seeing him mount a car in the middle of the chaos and assert himself as the inspirational hero everyone needs gives me the willies every time. And as the fight drags on and things look grimmer for New York's defenders, it's Chris Evans' portrayal of Steve Rogers that sells the grim determination and utter fatigue the heroes are feeling. Captain America, like the people he represents, shows the ragged edges even while soldiering on to prevail. Oh my, how I love this movie.

General Enjoyment 'Cheese': This movie is perhaps the ultimate in the genre, and as such people who aren't interested in superhero action are going to find it hard to sit still. And while I'd tend to say screw 'em and move on, there are a few things to watch for those not wooed by colorful characters and bold blasts of action. The script is interesting and engaging throughout, and it's crafted better than most movies with such a large cast of heavy principal characters. There's a decent amount of wry humor that is Whedon's signature, too. But in the end, probably the most compelling thing about The Avengers to those too cynical for superheroes is that it embodies a combination of the greatest aspirations and deepest flaws of idealized America. These heroes have problems, and much of the time wasted bickering adds to the villain's power and increases the final body count. But in the end, they're still willing to put themselves between innocent civilians and death. It's made all the more cogent by the brilliant holocaust reference in the first half of the movie, and I think should make for a fun objective analysis.

For the rest of us who can't be objective, though, for those of us champing at the bit to see high-flying combat and expensive battle sequences, The Avengers pays off in a big way. Fans of comics and the genre will be coming back to this movie for more for many years, and Marvel has probably set the bar too high for DC to attempt a Justice League movie this decade. Yeah, that's right. I said it.



Now for a review of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase One set. This appropriately long title describes a huge blu-ray boxed set containing Iron Man, Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America, and The Avengers all in one set. They also include the 3D versions of Thor, Captain America, and The Avengers, as the other movies were released before every big-budget movie had to have 3D features. There's also a tenth disc called the SHIELD Initiative that contains features relating to the other movies as a whole. Finally, there are a number of fun physical components to this set--a small intel folder on the principal characters from the movies. There's Black Widow's report on Tony's potential for Avenger membership, Captain America's World War Two era documents including three of his trading cards, and even a light-up cosmic cube. All of this is contained in a small plastic briefcase with the SHIELD logo on it, making for a fantastic presentation.

It's important to emphasize that since the constituent movies have all had multi-disc sets released in the past, the discs included in this set don't include every feature that has yet been released. So, unfortunately, this is not technically an exhaustive set. Rather, it's more the coup de grace for obsessive fans like myself or for those who held out to get all the movies for one combined price. The SHIELD Initiative disc, however, does offer some deleted scenes from several movies that you can't get anywhere else and features introductions to each movie by Agent Phil Coulson. The Coulson intros are a nice boon to those of us who couldn't put our entire day on hold to see the many all-day marathons of the movies theaters showed on Avengers' opening day. The physical components are a lot of fun and feel legit--Tony's folder contains a coffee-stained napkin with an informal memo to Pepper that they were going to stop selling weapons, for instance. One notable exception is the Cosmic Cube--it lights up, but it's a deeper blue than in the movie and it's a flat, featureless cube and features none of the ornate etching in the movie. That's disappointing to some, apparently, but made no difference to my son, who temper-tantrumed over it for hours. Another impressive bit of detail in this set is that each of the disc envelopes are emblazoned with bold, iconic art of their characters in almost cubist silhouettes.

Overall, I'd say that what makes this mega-sized boxed set worthwhile are the physical novelties and collector's factor. Don't take that as a lukewarm diagnosis, though. I love this set and I couldn't imagine my Marvel movie collection complete--or even adequate--without it.



Well, that's it for the next six or seven hours at least. I'm going to try to put up a slightly more succinct Iron Man 3 review immediately after the midnight showing. We'll see how that works out. Filmatleven...fifty-nine.

Blog of the Dead

There are basically two types of blogs*: blogs that get updated regularly, creating a steadily growing pool of content that gains a popular life of its own such that it gets regular traffic even with less frequent updates, and blogs that stagnate, creating an embarrassing void conspicuous to the new reader that fails to impress that this blog is worth regularly following. Ben's Nerdery has always aimed to be the former.

So, what's been going on? Well, most recently, my family went up to the Fire and Ice Convention in Manitowoc Wisconsin for our second annual family outing there. Less recently than that, I had the bliss of wrangling a 23 month-old in an airplane for a 5 hour flight to LAX.

Woo.

Hoo.

Least recently of all--as in, last frakking October--I became a handynerd (one standard of deviation away from being a handyman) and had a zombie birthday party. Zombies, I tell you! It was a low-key, smallish party--mostly because the official invites went out late and people are turds--but we had a lot of fun. The party invites were themed to look like an emergency evacuation notice, and we made treat 'bags' that were themed after Left 4 Dead medkits.

A quickly thrown-together invite made during a lunch break or two.

  

Feel free to use this for your own zombie parties and games, writing in scrawled personal details in the blank space. I put in the party specifics in those spaces, using a font to make it look a bit like hasty handwriting. The medkits were simply boxes of folded cardstock, with a few themed treats inside. Everyone got a P-38 can opener, as well as: a tube of M&M Mini's labeled Phalanx--the zombieism placebo from World War Z; breathsavers with a wrap to look like shotgun shells; Tic-Tacs labeled 'Pills here!' with the Left 4 Dead logo; road flare Rolos; Fruit by the Foot bandages. It made for neat things to give out to guests that didn't really require too much work to do individually but definitely made the party theme come out. Everyone at the party except my beloved waifu dressed up as either a zombie or a survivor. I dressed up as a zombie, with moderately successful effect. 

Check out my friggin' Skeletor hand

Alright, so I feel a little lame that A) my costume was done about 15 minutes after the last minute; and B) it incorporated none of the crafty self-made ideas I'd been pondering over the previous weeks. However, it was a quick mess to slop on and fairly easy to get off, and was moderately cool-looking for the minimal hassle, in my opinion. The neck-bite kit's latex was a little fiddly and didn't feel too secure even after waiting the recommended 10 minutes. Then again, I'd hardly want to spirit gum my neck. The other big feature of my outfit was the teeth--hard plastic denture thingies as opposed to the cheaper flexible kind. Great googaly-moogaly they were uncomfortable. In addition to rubbing a sore against my upper left gums, the inside of the dentures kept pooling with saliva, leaving me in a state of partially drowning in my own fluids. This may be good for establishing the torment of the living dead, but I think I'll pass on it in the future.

Of course, that didn't stop me from saving them--just in case.

Little Shawn was too tired for photos that day

My son, dressed up as a certain zombie-smashing protagonist who's got red on him. I'm a big fan of Shaun of the Dead, and I wanted to see my little blond-haired boy running around thumping zombies with a mini cricket bat. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a safe cricket bat to buy for him, and I didn't have time to make one, so he went without. The little guy really impressed me with his development, though, displaying hyper-advanced cognitive functions by frakking narcing on me.

See, I was the one in charge of his costume, so before I zombified myself I threw some fake blood in his shirt pocket. As soon as my plucky electronic store clerk saw the thick red stain start to seep through his shirt, he began to mutter and moan. I dabbed it around into an ever-increasing mar on his white shirt, and accordingly the pint-sized party-goer began to sputter and pout, face wrinkling as he let me know that he thought the situation stunk. Once I'd finished and I suggested he go show his mother, he pounded on the bathroom door until she came, stamped his feet, and angrily accused "Da!" as he displayed his ruined shirt. Ah, memories.

(By the way, narcing is an example of advanced cognitive function because it established a layered taxonomy of thought, ethics, recourse, and guilt. He recognized I was changing his shirt in a lasting way, decided that it was not the way it should be, told an authority figure, and then proceeded to assign blame to the guilty party--me. That's m'boy!)

Now, there's a question that I've probably been asked a couple of times a year for nearly a decade now:

What's it with you and zombies?

Well, as grammatically suspect as that question is, it's one I'm fully prepared to answer. I've been enamored with the walking dead ever since I first played Myth in 1997 and saw a cut-scene featuring a mob of undead Thrall lurking at the bottom of a river, waiting to surface and overwhelm a nearby town. That visceral image is ever-present in my appreciation for the genre, and it is emblematic of the themes of the genre that grab me and never let go. Now, I also happen to be a zombie snob, and that goes to the point that there is one 'true' type of zombie and everything else--while it could very well be enjoyable--are deviations from the master zombie. This master zombie is a biologically and irrepressibly infectious creature that is devoid of a traditional human metabolism except for dependence on a central nervous system, possessed only by the urge to spread itself, which appears to be through cannibalistic attacks. So it's the World War Z zombie that I'm talking about here. The book, not the disrespectful absurdist movie (expect more rants on the movie in the future). These shambling zombies have no reliance on blood, tissues, or organs other than the brain, they desire to infect the living purely for the sake of viral reproduction, and they are limited by the rigamortis of their dead hosts. I'll doubtless go into the logistics and storytelling rationale of the superiority of this zombie iteration later, but for now I'll just gloss over the definition and skip to the essence of the question: why I like zombies.

I'm not a fan of gore for it's own sake. Sure, I've watched every episode of Deadliest Warrior wide-eyed several times, but it's not the visceral violent spectacle that draws me to the zombie genre. It's that zombies are an indictment of human frivolity--or at least modern frivolity. Zombies are the sort of enemy that a rational and stoic human should be able to handle, whether in a modern or primitive setting. But yet the zombie--even if slow and simple-minded--manages to plod onwards and devour the resourceful but terminally-flawed humans.

As Simon Pegg said in an old article from 2008, zombies are supposed to be a manifestation of death itself: plodding, slow, unsophisticated, and only slowed or delayed by technology--never completely vanquished by it. But a good zombie yarn also condemns its characters to a degree, because after the initial outbreaks victims to zombie attacks almost always deserve their deaths. They die for curiosity, overconfidence, lack of cooperation with their fellows, or a general unwillingness to live in the post-modern world. That last part is a critical component of the survival aspect of most zombie stories since their 80s resurgence, because modern leisure has divorced most of us from useful, practical skill sets. And as such the struggle to become self-reliant and useful is a fixture in stories that have protagonists that are shop clerks (as in Shawn of the Dead), bike messengers (28 Days Later), Best Buy associates (Dawn of the Dead remake), game-playing shut-ins (Zombieland), and so forth. All of these characters need to learn hard, fast lessons and reform their character to survive. Static characters don't fare well in these movies: one gets torn apart and pot-lucked in Shawn of the Dead, another served up as an a-la-car zombie-snack  in 28 Days Later, one shrill one gets chainsawed in half for no frakkin' reason in Dawn of the Dead, and finally a famous one is shot in the chest for surprising an unassuming loser in Zombieland. In the novel World War Z, this point is especially elaborated in one chapter in the post-zombie West Coast of America. In it formerly rich white folks in America sit down and learn gardening and cooking raw ingredients from people who used to be their landscapers and maids. It's a fabulous message that gets lost as zombies become a faster, sillier threat.

Now you'll notice that all of my examples except Shawn of the Dead feature fast zombies (or 'infected' in 28 Days Later's case). This is deliberate, as these movies' focus strays toward gunplay, simple-minded action, or purely human threats. The dilution of the zombie's identity as a slow-but-hard-to-kill threat makes it less nuanced and requires you to move away from them as the focus of your story. People are more likely to die for reasons outside their own control and culpability, and the zombies themselves make less sense. I think it's pretty well-represented by the zombie evolution you see in the Romero remakes, where zombies are not only fast but become smarter over time to the point that they have individuals and leaders in Land of the Dead. And they keep waffling between alien, supernatural, and biological explanations as none of them are satisfactory ways to justify having fundamentally super-powered zombies that are fast, smart, and resilient to the loss of all but one organ. And most of all, these stories have to cheat to establish the initial world-wide infection levels needed to make a good zombie story. People just wake up one day and they're everywhere. How? With zombies that fast, that obvious, and infection turnover in terms of minutes or seconds, how could a zombie even get aboard a plane, let alone make it to cross an ocean from one continent to another? The transmission of a disease takes time, and the longer an infected host can move freely about a population, the more likely it is that the disease is going to spread. Fast zombies just aren't effective as a contagion because they are too deadly a threat as individuals--which also means that fast zombies are more likely to destroy a victim rather than let a wounded victim escape to infect more friendlies.

And there you go. A long, long overdue post that combined a few crafty ideas and a long-winded ramble on my stance on the zombie issue. And it took only...4 months? Don't worry, though, as my love for zombies extends to this deadly quiet blog, and I've got quite a few special things in store for you over the coming days.

*As much as any dichotomy can be true, that is. In algebraic terms, you can only say there are two types of things: A and not-A. More specific dichotomies are usually either simply false or misleading simplifications.

Don't Be That Guy: Joyeux Nouvel An

("Happy New Year" in the Black Tongue)

I'll make this quick. France is nuts.

How nuts is it?

So nuts that when French youths get all bothered and snockered with New Year's festivities, it boils over in a rash of frakkin' setting cars on fire. According to French officials, nearly 1200 cars and motorcycles were burned in France this past Tuesday, making the country the most ridiculous country in the world for at least a day.

Seriously, I guess I must be an impotent nerd, because I don't understand the leap from having a happy to lighting it on fire. Though according to paranoid studies, I intake enough violent entertainment to be entitled to at least a couple of acts of random arson a year. Maybe I should clear my schedule for some car-burning after The Desolation of Smaug is released next December.

Now, there's an estimated 31 million cars in France (based on Nationmaster.com's cars stats), so that means the odds of waking up on New Year's Day to find your car torched are about one in thirty thousand. Not bad odds by Lotto standards, but pretty sucktastic when you're a poor Franc planning on driving anywhere ever again. The mass arson is at least partly gang related, as French gangs and blocks compete to burn the most cars and brag about it via social networking.

Merci, Facebook.

Add to that lameness the fact that French officials seem to think that this trend of car arson is a throw back to the mass riots of 2005, and we have one distinct image of the modern Frenchman:

France: home of the rage zombie infected

Apparently those plucky infected Brits made it into France in 2007 after all. Because that's all I can come up with to explain to French authorities the epidemic suckage of their populace. I mean really, the best guess they have is that the masses got 'hooked' on the wanton destruction of the 2005 protests? That's like saying your people found that acting like rugensteins worked out so well in the past, so why not keep doing it?

I'm not exactly champing at the bit to visit France--you'll note I refer to their native language as the Black Tongue above. But I would like to tour some of the historic battlefields of Europe at some point in the future.

Maybe I'll make it a walking tour if I hit France, though.

(These are 28 Weeks Later references, people)

2013: Now with 50% less fail!

So it's a new year, and I refuse to start it off with apologies about the long gaps between posts.

I refuse.

Instead, I'll give a quick sketch of the next year's nerd events and my own forecast on them. Now, this doesn't mean I'm going to ignore the laundry list of to-blogs from the past year: I'll still be writing on the backlog of 2012 content if I have even the slightest opportunity. In particular The Avengers, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Dark Knight Rises, and The Amazing Spider-Man demand my reviewer's attention, not to mention I feel like another Mass Effect 3 rant is bubbling beneath the surface of my writer's block (just kidding--don't change the browser!).

Movies of 2013

Iron Man 3

Coming out May 3, 2013

I'm a fan of all of the latest crop of true Marvel movies. True Marvel movies being the ones directly produced by Marvel, not the latest Spider-Man and X-Men cinematic properties--obviously. But I really love the realization of Marvel's staple characters on the big screen, including Iron Man and Iron Man 2. Movie Tony has developed a very particular style and presence thanks to Robert Downey Jr.'s inimitable panache and great directing in the past, and so I'm eager to see more of the well-realized character's heroic journey. The film's trailers make it look like Iron Man 3 is going to delve into the darker aspects of Tony Stark's heroic identity and feature a lot of Benjamin Kingsley mustache-twirling as the Mandarin, one of Iron Man's most formidable and enduring foes. I like this. There also looks to be a realistic treatment of the frailty of the hero's private life, also an element I like to see explored in a reasonably consistent hero story. So bring it on.

However, (you knew that was coming, right?) I have never been a fan of the Extremis plot of the comics. As a kid, I always found the limitations of Iron Man's armor to be the most charming part. Sure, Iron Man might be a world-class super when he has time to put on the right variation of his armor, but if he's surprised while out of costume he's at a huge disadvantage. The Extremis plot (in the comics, hopefully they'll change it in the movie) makes Tony's armor into a nanite-fueled power that he can summon at will and which compresses into his bones when unneeded, defusing the character and grit of the traditional armor-donning we've seen in the movies. Not to mention that the Extremis plot involved a variation of psychotic rage zombie that was a more dramatic than action-packed threat to the invincible Iron Man. But even with some minor reservations, I am so going to see this movie on opening day.

Thor: The Dark World

Coming out November 8, 2013

The next movie of the Asgardian Thunderer's exploits is coming out in the final quarter of the year, and verily I am excited to see this movie. Which you doubtless could have surmised from my review of the first movie. Doubly excited are my humors at the prospect of seeing Christopher Eccleston cast as the dark elf Malekith. The vengeful schemer is a worthy antagonist in his own right, but the promise of Malekith's plot pertains more to Asgard than Midgard, and so verily I adjudge more battles celestial to feature in this film, giving more glorious action to the Warriors Three and fair Sif. The return of the entire many-starred cast from the premier saga is encouraging and promising as well. And while I'm vexed that Darcy Lewis is ordained to be still relevant to the plot, I can forgive the gratuitous presence of Kat Dennings in another Thor film.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Coming out December 13, 2013

Again nerds can look forward to closing out the year with a journey to cinematic Middle Earth. While there were some definite faults with the first part of the new trilogy, I enjoyed it immensely and the well-selected and well-led cast will be a powerful draw for this next film. With Smaug comes some of the most iconic moments of the book, which I hope they will handle with accuracy and consistency (the first movie screwed me out of "fifteen birds in five fir trees!"). There's the promise of some incredible visuals, but also a compelling dramatic dynamic in this part of Bilbo's adventures as well, as Thorin's dark side and obsession come to the fore. Yes, The Desolation of Smaug is going to be well worth the wait and a worthy bookend to the year.

Games of 2013
Aliens: Colonial Marines
Coming out February 12, 2013
Yes, this one was in my previous post for nerd features of 2012, too. And after being so long delayed, there's definitely a justifiable fear that this game might go the way of Duke Nukem Forever--postponed so long that the game becomes an unplayable boondoggle, the dross of a revolving door of half-committed teams. I don't think we'll be stuck with that same fate, though. Unlike DNF, Aliens: Colonial Marines has shown more of its cinematic story in the past weeks, and the gameplay--which had always been a promising combination of first-person defensive tactics and Left 4 Dead--now looks like it will be supplemented with a fun, tense campaign narrative.

Indie Games--the Kickstarter role-call
Coming out throughout 2013
Kickstarter has seen some great games getting approved within the past year, and many of those promising projects are going to get generally released in the coming months. There's the old-school tactical RPG with rotoscoped art and Norse-inspired themes of Banner Saga, which looks painfully beautiful and features head-smackingly challenging tactical gameplay that demands you stay one step ahead of your opponent and yourself. The Canucks at Sauropod Studios are refining their already fun prototype build of Castle Story, making a dynamic resource and strategy game that will be the best thing to happen to voxels since Minecraft. Star Command, a tactical crew command game where you move your redshirts and officers around the stations of your own upgradeable starship, fighting other ships and repelling boarders in Trek-influenced fare, should be released within the next couple of months. Polish-made M.O.R.E. promises to revive the underwhelming 4X genre of PC games with a space empire-building game that takes a lot of cues from Master of Orion II, arguably the best game in the genre. And by arguably I mean you're dumb if you think otherwise. And there's Dead State, a zombie survival tactical RPG where choices are supposed to matter on a group survival basis--so like Walking Dead plus Mass Effect plus mechanically deep gameplay. Coolio.

On the larger-but-still-indie side of things, Planetary Annihilation looks to be ready to give the RTS genre a well-deserved kick in the pants. It comes from some of the creators of Total Annihilation, one of the absolute best real-time strategy games of all time. The rock-paper-scissors and same-old gameplay of Blizzard's latest regurgitation of Starcraft just goes to show that the genre needs new blood, so Planetary Annihilation's developer, Uber Entertainment, is going to provide that in a game where conquering the map becomes conquering the planet becomes smashing other worlds with asteroids in a bid to take over whole star systems, all in one seamless real-time experience. Can't wait.

Similarly, there's a number of great tabletop games coming out this year. Shadows of Esteren, a French-made medieval horror RPG taking a lot of inspiration from Welsh and Celtic culture and myth, has made a successful translation over to America and is one of the most beautifully rendered RPG projects I've ever seen. Dreadball, by Mantic Games, is going to be a miniatures-based sci-fi sports game in the same vein as Games Workshop's long-neglected fantasy game Blood Bowl. And more plastic addictions are currently waiting in the wings, as well, so look for even more hyper-nerdery in the new year.

Blog Posts of 2013
Now, in addition to the stuff listed above (and the listings of past promises), I'm looking ahead to set-piece articles in the next year. My family is definitely going to the Fire and Ice Game Convention again, and this time I'll be leading a game or two, so you can expect coverage of the game preparation and planning process before the con and then an after-action report afterwards as well.

Also, I've fallen into the Star Citizen fanboy pit (thanks to my Kickstarter addiction), so you can bet you'll get at least a couple of articles about it before Nerd Year 2014. I plan on some commentary, nostalgia, and at least one or two articles leading up to the unveiling of some serious awesome towards the end of the year.