As a kid, I used to spend hours poring over any sort of “superheroes A-Z” content I could find. I had some that came in issues of comics, and the long-running Marvel-phile column in Dragon, and probably other sources I’ve forgotten about. When I started playing TSR’s Marvel Super Heroes, I traced hero silhouettes from […]
The Marvel Encyclopedia is awesome Read More »
Thanks to the inimitable Alex Schroeder, I followed a link to this excellent 2005 essay by Michael Andre-Driussi: Deciphering the Text Foundations of Traveller. Here’s Driussi’s thesis: “The creators of CT wanted the anarchic, amoral, and violent adventure of fantasy role playing translated into a science fiction setting. They also wanted a kind of science
Traveller’s literary sources Read More »
Nick Abadzis‘ and Hilary Sycamore‘s Laika (paid link) is meditative, thorough, and heartbreaking. Everything I knew about Laika — the first orbital space traveler, a stray dog trained and conditioned for her one-way mission — before reading this book came from her Wikipedia entry and small exhibits about her at aerospace museums. I now know
Laika is meditative and heartbreaking Read More »
The number of possible permutations for card order in a standard deck of playing cards, 52! (52 factorial, or 52x51x50x49 . . . all the way down to x1), is staggeringly large. How large? Yannay Khaikin, who created this lovely video explaining the concept, says it’s this large: Any time you pick up a well
Every well-shuffled deck of cards is in a unique order Read More »
I love getting reading recommendations, but my to-read shelves are such an embarrassment, particularly when it comes to comics, that I don’t always take them. But after a visit to Outsider Comics and Geek Boutique (which rocks!), I took one: Rat Queens (paid link). I heard about RQ when it launched, but had too much on
Rat Queens fucking rules Read More »
I quit WoW in 2011, but watching Sword Art Online (an anime series about players trapped inside a VR MMO) made me nostalgic for it. One of many things I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed about WoW was how pretty it can be; this screenshot is from Winterspring, one of my favorite zones in terms
Returning to WoW after five years away Read More »
Yesterday was our 10th wedding anniversary, and we spent it in Leavenworth, WA — the first just-us trip we’ve taken since our daughter was born (even further back, actually: the first since our honeymoon). It was a short overnight trip that somehow managed to feel like it lasted much longer, in the best possible way.
Our 10th wedding anniversary Read More »
After making a string of phone calls where I needed to spell things for the person on the other end of the line, I decided it was finally time to learn the NATO phonetic alphabet so I could stop doing this: Okay, it’s five, P as in pork chop [shit, now I’m hungry], six, three,
The D&D phonetic alphabet Read More »
I backed John Mahoney’s Zentropa on Kickstarter because it looked gorgeous and it seemed like he had his shit together. When I saw the samples he posted, it felt very Heavy Metal to me, and apparently they agreed: The first 10 pages of Zentropa appear in issue #382. I was also intrigued by the concept
Zentropa: A wordless, sexy, phantasmagorical graphic novel Read More »
I have a container fetish. Not a problem, mind you,[1] a fetish. Browsing in office supply stores is dangerous for me. When we moved to Seattle, and everything I owned became, at some point, another fucking thing to haul across the country, I threw out a box full of smaller boxes.[2] I own more dice
